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Banco Santander S.A. plans to start offering crypto-related services to its Brazilian customers

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  • July 30, 2022
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The Brazilian subsidiary of the Spanish Santander Group, Banco Santander S.A. campaigns to start offering crypto trading, possibly this year.

Folha de S. Paulo, citing the CEO of Santander Brasil Mario Leão claimed that the bank plans to start offering crypto-related services to its Brazilian customers “in the coming months.”

The CEO is mentioned as saying that the bank expects to have “definitions about it” in the next few months, during the next quarterly results release, or “even before,” adding:

“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 client has demanded this type of asset, so we have to find the most correct and more educational way of doing so.”

The Latin American banking giant Itaú declared on July 14, the launch of its own asset tokenization platform, Itaú Digital Assets, while last May, XP, and Nubank broadcasted their crypto offerings as well, distinguished the report.

Also, as reported in May, Nubank had said it was set to invest 1% of its portfolio in bitcoin (BTC), and that it would start rolling out functions that allow its app users to buy, sell, and hold BTC and Ethereum (ETH).

And that’s not all, as crypto has been distributed all over the region for a while now. For example, a report stated in January this year, Argentine-headquartered e-commerce giant Mercado Libre invested in Mercado Bitcoin and Paxos (PAX) as it tends to increase its presence in the crypto sphere, as well as digital asset development and adoption in Latin America.

In the meantime, on Thursday, Banco Santander Brasil SA “beat second-quarter net income market expectations,” Reuters reported, as its net profit rose 2% from the previous quarter to BRL 4.08bn (USD 787m).

That supposed, loan-loss provisions – an indicator of how much cash the bank has set aside to cover loans that are unlikely to be fully repaid – rose against the “challenging” macroeconomic backdrop and hit BRL 5.75bn (USD 1.1bn), up 24.6% on the quarter.

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