Wells Fargo is slicing a total of US$32 million from eight of its top executives pay, axing cash bonuses and cutting long-term performance share awards. This is seen as the US major's latest effort to restore investor and customer confidence in the wake of a scandal over bogus accounts, the Financial Times reports. Thousands of employees, under pressure to meet sales targets, set up as many as 2 million bogus fee-generating bank accounts for customers without their permission over several years. The bank's board has yet to disclose the findings of its inquiry. SBI Ripple Asia announced today that a consortium of 47 banks have successfully completed a pilot implementation of Ripple in Japan using a cloud-based payments platform. This platform, RC Cloud, is powered by Ripple's software and systems and is the first in the world to enable real-time money transfers both domestically and internationally. As a result, the consortium has confirmed that it will move into commercial phase.