During yesterday’s quarterly earnings call, Santander Brazil CEO Mário Leão announced the bank is planning a retail cryptocurrency offering. The launch will be within the next three months.
“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 clients have demand for this type of asset. So we have to find the most correct and educational way of doing so,” said Leão, according to Fohla de S.Paolo.
The CEO added that the bank intends to use blockchain to tokenize traditional assets such as debt securities.
His reference to competitors may be a nod to Itau, which launched its asset tokenization platform this month. It hasn’t yet formally announced a cryptocurrency offering.
Additionally, this week the Inter American Development Bank unveiled a tokenized blockchain bond in Spain, which it views as a template for other issuances in Latin America and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Santander has a variety of blockchain and crypto activities around the world. In Argentina, it partnered with blockchain startup Agrotoken for agriculture commodity loans. Agrotokens track commodity prices. It recently ran a blockchain challenge awards ceremony in the Decentraland metaverse. The bank issued its own bond on the Ethereum blockchain and was involved in the European Investment Bank‘s bond issuance.
