Santander Brazil CEO Confirms The Debut Of Crypto Trading Services In Near Future

Spanish banking multinational Santander will soon integrate crypto trading services for institutional and individual customers of Santander Brazil.

Santander Brazil CEO Mario Leao revealed the intentions of the firm Thursday and as per a report by newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, additional details on the same could be provided in mid-October during the company's next earnings release.

"We expect in the next few months to have definitions about it, who knows in the next release [of quarterly results], or even before," Leao 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 view that our client has demand for this type of asset, so we have to find the most correct and more educational way of doing so."

The bank launched loans in Argentina in March which were collateralized with commodities that were in tokenized form, according to CoinDesk. The banking multinational partnered with Agrotoken, an agricultural commodities tokenization platform, to provide the loans. This was the first time Santander Brazil was involved with blockchain and tokenization of assets.

"This disruptive technology [blockchain technology] is making great strides and many praise its multiple applications in different fields, from finance to medicine to the environment. These are the terms that you need to know to understand what people mean when they are talking about blockchain," the firm stated in a blog post.

Brazil has become the playground for crypto firms as recently the largest private bank in the country, Itaú Unibanco, launched an asset tokenization platform, adding that it hasn't ruled out the possibility of offering cryptocurrency trading services to its customers.