Banco Santander launches digital investment unit focused on Blockchain-based development.

Last Monday, Banco Santander revealed the launch of a digital investment unit specifically focused on blockchain technology. The unit will be directed by John Whelan from Santander’s blockchain laboratory.

“The wave of digitalization that is occurring in the financial industry is accelerating,”

said José M. Linares, Santander’s Sr. Executive Vice President and global head of corporate and investment banking.

“Our clients expect this to result in better solutions, lower costs and new categories of products and services that enable them to access capital markets more efficiently than ever before. We want to offer our clients what they expect from us.”

This is not the first time that the Spanish bank has entered into agreements with blockchain or cryptocurrency companies. They have commercial agreements with Ripple. The bank’s executives are even exploring the possibility of “tokenizing” assets in order to speed up capital markets, derivatives and other related products that will benefit from decentralized technology. According to the CEO of Santander, Ana Botin,

“We [Santander] cover 50% of all currency payments that Santander makes annually [with Ripple]. It works very well because we have been testing it for 2 years. It is safe and complies with our regulations.”

Santander has been increasingly committed to blockchain technology. It was recently accepted as part of the “We Trade” consortium. It has also joined the Ethereum Corporate Consortium – which establishes links between several companies and financial institutions around issues related to Ethereum. This is evidence of how financial institutions are betting on decentralized technology as part of a fintech revolution, where shared data could break the boundaries of banking and business administration.

 

by Samuel Larreal

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here