Banco Santander set to launch crypto trading in Brazil
Santander Brazil, the Brazilian subsidiary of Spanish banking giant Banco Santander, plans to launch a crypto trading service in the coming months.
Per local media publication Folha de S. Paulo, Santander Brazil CEO Mario Leão said that the firm is currently building the infrastructure to make crypto market access available to institutional and individual customers.
However, Leão didn’t go into great detail about how the product will work, and it’s unclear whether Santander will enter into a partnership or offer crypto products directly. He only indicated that the timing for the product’s launch was rather short.
“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 vision that our client has demand for this type of asset, so we have to find the most correct and most educational way to do it,” said Leão.
The CEO added the retail crypto market is already very large in Brazil, evidenced by the fact that crypto traders double the number of stock investors, based on a recent survey conducted by local media.
The news comes shortly after Brazil’s largest brokerage firm XP Inc (XP.O) said it expects to open its crypto trading platform, dubbed ‘XTAGE’, by mid-August. The platform was developed in partnership with Nasdaq and BitGo and crypto features will be integrated into the XP app. The new capability will allow XP’s 3.6 million users to make trades while staying on the platform. XTAGE is built on Nasdaq’s trading technology while BitGo will act as a custodian.
Nubank, the largest Brazilian digital bank, also revealed yesterday that it reached the mark of 1 million active users making low-cost cryptocurrency transactions, just two months after launching the service.
Nubank, which is owned by Bitcoin critic Warren Buffet, has partnered with the New York-based exchange and stablecoin issuer for an exclusive in-app crypto trading experience. In particular, the US-listed broker’s customers are now able to buy, hold and sell a handful of crypto assets — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.
In a different vein, Binance cut ties with its existing payments partner in Brazil due to conflict with “its own values.” The crypto giant is already in the process of replacing Capitual with a local payment provider that will be revealed soon to give a better solution for customers. The transition is expected to complete in the coming weeks. Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals in Brazilian reals through the government’s payment system Pix in June.
