Santander Private Banking International, a subsidiary of Spain’s Banco Santander, is expanding its financial services by offering customers with accounts in Switzerland trading and investing in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), the Ethereum cryptocurrency.
The Services are offered based on customer demand and aim to meet customers’ specific needs and preferences. Users with greater purchasing poweraccordingly mention, that A specialist media that received the information from a bank spokesman. There are approximately 210,000 customers with assets and deposits worth approximately $315 million.
This would be Banco Santander’s first foray into the cryptocurrency sector in a controlled environment, with the aim of expanding its cryptocurrency offering in the coming months. A reference to that Service could soon come to Spain and other websites where the institution operates.
Santander BTC and ETH trading goes live as part of a regulated custody modelthrough which the bank stores the private keys.
The move by the over 160-year-old bank with 166 million customers begins with the opening of accounts in Switzerland, taking into account the ecosystem regulations in force in that country Bitcoin It is one of the most advanced in the world. “It provides clarity and a comprehensive regulatory environment for our customers,” said John Whelan, head of cryptocurrencies and digital assets at Santander.
This new offering of cryptocurrency services from the bank responds to a change in position in the ecosystem that the bank highlighted this year. This comes after the company’s transactions on Bitcoin exchanges were restricted in 2022, as required by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.
This year everything seems to have changed. As CriptoNoticias reported, Santander published an article in June last year Highlighting the benefits offered by the Bitcoin Lightning network for process “large volumes of instant micropayments.”
With the announcement of these new services, Banco de Santander is now following a line that other financial institutions in Europe have also taken. Large German banks such as Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank and DZ Bank stand out.
Other European banks are taking similar measures, largely for this reason tailored to the needs of its institutional customers and the fear of being left behind by the avalanche of non-bank companies offering new services.
The list includes names such as CACEIS and Crédit Agricole, the second largest bank in the French ranking. Last July, the blockchain unit of Société Générale SA received the first license issued under the new rules for the cryptocurrency sector in France.