Banco Santander S.A., a Brazilian subsidiary of the Spanish banking giant Santander Group, is reportedly planning to roll out crypto trading services in Brazil.
According to an article by Decrypt, local news outlet Folha de S.Paulo is reporting that Santander is planning to begin offering crypto trading services for clients in Brazil. The Brazilian subsidiary’s CEO, Mario Leão, reportedly told journalists that the bank plans to share more information on the launch of crypto trading services in the coming months. He hinted at the service possibly being detailed during the publication of the bank’s next quarterly results.
Leão said,
We recognize that it is a market that is here to stay, and it is not necessarily a reaction to competitors positioning themselves; it is simply a vision that our client has demand for this type of asset, so we have to find the most correct and most educational way to do it.
Santander’s foray into crypto trading services in Brazil would follow a similar offering made by the country’s largest bank, Nubank. In May, Nubank began offering Bitcoin and Ethereum trading for clients, and recently claimed to have acquired more than one million users on the platform within the first two months.
Itaú Digital Assets, another major bank in Brazil, also announced the launch of its own asset tokenization platform in mid-July.
In addition to offering crypto services, the report claims that Banco Santander S.A.is looking into the use of blockchain to tokenize traditional market assets, such as debt securities.
Santander has been an active participant in the crypto space, offering a Ripple-backed digital banking app in certain regions as far back as 2018. The banking giant also announced the launch of a $20 million blockchain bond on Ethereum in 2019.
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