Report: Santander’s Openbank Applies for Licenses to Offer Crypto Services

Banco Santander SA is reportedly considering offering a stablecoin and providing its digital bank’s retail clients with access to cryptocurrencies.

The Spanish bank’s online banking unit, Openbank, has applied for licenses to offer these services under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, Bloomberg reported Thursday (May 29), citing unnamed sources.

Santander did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

According to the Bloomberg report, the bank is considering euro- and dollar-denominated stablecoins, either creating its own stablecoin or offering access to an existing one.

Openbank, which operates in several European countries, could launch crypto services as soon as this year, depending on its receipt of regulatory approvals, according to the report.

Santander’s Spanish rival, BBVA SA, said in March that it will begin offering crypto services after getting approval from Spain’s regulator, per the report. BBVA already offers similar services in Switzerland and Turkey.

When announcing in March that it received approval from the Spanish Securities and Exchange Commission (CNMV) to provide custody and execution services for crypto assets trading orders, BBVA said it is set to enable its customers to buy, sell and manage bitcoin and ether transactions through its app.

“We want to make it easier for our customers to invest in crypto assets with a simple, accessible offering available directly from their mobile phones, in a fully digital manner,” Gonzalo Rodríguez, BBVA’s head of retail banking in Spain, said at the time in a press release. “Our goal is to guide them as they explore this new segment of digital assets, backed by the solvency and security assurances provided by a bank like BBVA.”

The EU’s MiCA regulation, which is aimed at harmonizing the fragmented regulatory landscape across the EU’s 27 member states, is shaping the operational realities of some of the world’s largest crypto companies in one of the world’s biggest economic regions, PYMNTS reported in March.

MiCA’s comprehensive approach covers participants in the crypto market and permits banks, investment firms and other financial institutions to engage in crypto-market activities, provided they have authorization under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) II to offer services.