Santander, the multinational banking giant, has recently announced that it will start offering cryptocurrency trading services in Brazil. The bank will roll out this functionality to selected customers of Toro, its investment unit, this week and will gradually extend it to more users in the future. With this move, Santander joins Nubank and Itau Unibanco, who also offer crypto trading services in the country.
Santander to Offer Cryptocurrency Trading for Selected Customers in Brazil; Mulls General Crypto Rollout
More traditional institutions are targeting cryptocurrency-savvy customers in Brazil. Santander, one of the world’s largest banks, has announced that it will start offering cryptocurrency trading services to customers of its Toro investment unit. This decision comes after three years of internal studies and market analysis of Santander, which joins the ranks of other institutions like Nubank and Itau Unibanco, which already offer these services to their customers.
Toro will start offering these cryptocurrency trading services to a selected group of customers deemed appropriate for the risk profile of trading cryptocurrency. Toro has already offered exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and investment funds, only for selected customers. Trading will start this week, with bitcoin and ether being the only two cryptocurrency assets offered.
Joao Resende, co-founder and CEO of Toro, stated they would study to extend the cryptocurrency offering and tokenized assets and grow to offer these services to more than 1 million platform customers. Also, this offering might extend to other units of Santander. “This is a first step that we are taking,” he stressed.
While Santander had decided to enter the cryptocurrency market some time ago, having announced that it would offer crypto trading services back in 2022, Resende explained that it was delayed due to the different review and screening processes that partners offering custody and other support infrastructure had to undergo. “We wanted to make sure we were offering a product with all the necessary security and an educational focus,” he concluded.