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.
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