Union Bank of the Philippines (Unionbank) is reportedly gearing
up to offer a crypto custody service, which the bank says is in full
compliance with the central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). The
offering is in collaboration with Hex Trust, a leading Asian digital
asset custodian.
Philippines’ Unionbank Gets Ready to Offer Crypto Custody Service
Union Bank of the Philippines (Unionbank), one of the largest banks
in the country, has partnered with Hex Trust to pilot a digital asset
custody service, the crypto custody service firm announced last week.
Hex Trust provides a proprietary bank-grade crypto custody platform
called Hex Safe for banks, financial institutions, asset managers,
exchanges, and corporations. It supports “over 100 coins and tokens from
the top 10 blockchain protocols, in addition to security tokens built
on Ethereum, Tezos, and Corda,” its website details. Among supported
cryptocurrencies are bitcoin, ether, XRP, bitcoin cash, litecoin, binance coin, and tether.
Initially, Hex Trust will provide digital asset custody to
Unionbank’s employees as a pilot run before launching “a fully
commercialized digital asset custody service for the bank’s customers,”
the announcement details, elaborating:
Unionbank is in full compliance with the Bangko Sentral
ng Pilipinas (BSP) in offering this service. This partnership once again
puts Unionbank at the forefront of the industry as banks start to enter
the digital asset sector.
“Unionbank sees the digital asset space maturing as more and more
customers and institutional investors show interest in digital assets
and the blockchain,” the announcement adds.
In early 2019, the bank made headlines when it installed
a bitcoin ATM at one of its main branches. The “ATM is located in the
Ark Makati and can only be accessed during Ark branch hours,” a
Unionbank representative told Bitcoin.com News at the time.
Henry Aguda, Unionbank’s chief technology and operations officer, commented last week:
Digital assets are here to stay, whether it be in the
form of cryptocurrency, NFTs or tokenized assets, and we are seeing more
market demand for these.
“We are excited to be the first Philippine bank to pilot a custody
service for digital assets for our own employees, overseen by the BSP,
so that we can prepare the groundwork for a safe and protected system
for customers’ digital assets,” he concluded.
source link: https://news.bitcoin.com/union-bank-of-philippines-pilots-crypto-custody-service-digital-assets-here-to-stay/
