According to an internal announcement, Santander Private Banking International, a division of the massive Spanish financial services company Banco Santander, is providing high-net-worth clients with Swiss accounts with the opportunity to trade and invest in the two major cryptocurrencies, ether (ETH) and bitcoin (BTC).
The announcement stated that Santander will provide more cryptocurrencies that satisfy the bank’s screening requirements over the course of the following few months.
According to Santander, the assets are held in a regulated custody model where the bank keeps the private cryptographic keys in a secure location. The service is only offered to clients upon request through relationship managers.
This is a risky move considering that the majority of large banks would rather fiddle around with tokenization and stay away from open-access blockchains and the cryptocurrencies they power.
With 166 million customers, Banco Santander has been around for more than 160 years. With approximately $315 billion in assets and deposits, the private bank serves 210,000 affluent customers.
“The Swiss regulation related to digital assets is one of the first and most advanced in the world, since it provides clarity and a comprehensive regulatory environment for our clients,” said John Whelan, head of crypto and digital assets at Santander, in an email. “As holding of crypto as an alternative asset class continues to expand, we expect that our clients prefer to rely on their existing financial institutions to be responsible for their assets.”