Santander to offer cryptocurrency trading to residents of Brazil

The Brazilian branch of Santander “in the coming months” will offer clients the ability to trade digital assets. This was stated in an interview with Folha de S. Paulo by its CEO Mario Liav.

The top executive pledged to provide additional details after the publication of the next quarterly report, or earlier.

“The market [cryptocurrencies] will stay here forever. This is not necessarily a reaction to the steps of competitors. […] Our client demanded this type of assets, so we must find the most correct way […] to do this”, he explained.

On July 14, Brazil’s largest bank Itau Unibanco Holding did not rule out the future possibility of buying/selling digital assets for retail clients. In the first phase, the institution will offer tokenisation services for companies.

Earlier, Brazil’s largest neobank Nubank announced a partnership with Paxos. Through the collaboration, access to cryptocurrencies was made available to 50 mln of its clients.

In August 2021, the head of the Central Bank of Brazil, Roberto Campos Neto, spoke in favour of creating a regulatory framework for the industry.

The country became the second in the world to register bitcoin-ETF.

Earlier, in March 2022, Santander launched in Argentina a lending programme for local farmers based on tokenised agricultural commodities.

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