Santander to launch crypto trading feature in Brazil

Santander are set to launch a crypto trading feature in Brazil. The multinational banking institutions has made plans to offer digital asset trading services to its customers in Brazil, according to, Mario Leao, the Chief Executive of Santander Brazil on Thursday, July 28, 2022.

The newspaper, Folha de S. Paulo reported that Santander's crypto service isdue to be rolled out in mid-October when the institution releases its earnings report.

Why is Santander launching a crypto trading feature?

Despite regulatory hurdles and the current bearish market trends, some of the services that have been revolutionised by decentralized finance will gradually be adopted in traditional finance, says Leao. He believes that digital currencies are here to stay and the bank has made the decision to support a trading feature not out of competition with other financial powerhouses but because clients of the bank demand this alternative asset class. Education is the key to cryptocurrencies future, he added.

This is not the first time the Santander has made inroads with crypto in South America. The bank allied with an agricultural commodities tokenization platform called Agrotoken, to provide loans for farmers in Argentina.

In December 2021, the largest e-commerce firmsin Latin America, Mercado Libre introduced a feature that allows customers to buy, hold, and sell digital currencies in Brazil.

In July, PicPay, a prominent financial technology companies announced they will be launching an exchange and a stablecoin pegged to the national currency of Brazil later this year. While Santander is now starting it's crypto offering, other large players such as Nubank’s crypto trading platform, has already seen one million users.

Overall, this is great news for the emerging sector which has seen its flagship currency Bitcoin questioned by Warren Buffet, and other coins such as Dogecoin (DOGE), ZCash (ZEC), and Monero (XMR) being involved in dark web activities.