Spain’s Second-Largest Bank Will Soon Launch Crypto Services

BBVA, the second-largest bank in Spain, with about $840 billion in assets, is poised to enter the cryptocurrency trading and custody space, according to two people familiar with the plans. The Spanish bank will begin its crypto offering out of Switzerland, said a source. Switzerland has relatively comprehensive rules around digital assets, set out by the country’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA).

One source with knowledge of the plans told CoinDesk that BBVA is “launching its Europe-wide crypto initiative from Switzerland.” “There are still some compliance hurdles so this will not be in December, but I expect they [BBVA] will be live next month,” they added.

Asked if BBVA was building its solution primarily to deal with tokenized securities and the like, the source said: “This is a cryptocurrency offering.” BBVA said it could not comment. BBVA is rumored to have integrated the same custody solution for digital assets, called SILO, as Russia’s Gazprombank. (Gazprombank is already live with a crypto offering in Switzerland.)

About six months ago, BBVA began work on integrating the SILO custody platform built by core banking software provider Avaloq and Swiss crypto specialists METACO, according to the source. METACO is also known to be working on an institutional custody solution with London-headquartered Standard Chartered.

Spain’s Second-Largest Bank Will Soon Launch Crypto Services: Sources, CoinDesk, Dec 8