BBVA Switzerland, the Swiss arm of one of the largest Spanish banks, has announced that it will use the Harmonize platform of the Ripple-owned technology company Metaco for its crypto custody activities with institutional investors.
According to the press release published on December 7, BBVA, which has been providing custody of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) since 2021, has migrated its infrastructure to Harmonize to achieve greater flexibility and security:
“In this environment, transaction validation is more flexible and crypto assets are held in custody according to the highest security standards required by regulators.”
Harmonize will allow the bank to connect to blockchains other than Bitcoin and Ethereum, potentially expanding BBVA’s crypto service:
“Trading on Harmonize™ opens the door for BBVA to offer new services in the future, such as trading other crypto assets besides bitcoin and ether, or the ‘tokenization’ of traditional assets.”
Cointelegraph has contacted Metaco for additional details but has not yet received a response.
Metaco launched Harmonize – the orchestration layer for digital asset applications – in 2021. Recently, another bank, HSBC, partnered with Metaco to integrate Harmonize with HSBC’s new digital asset custody service. Metaco’s partnerships among major financial institutions include DZ Bank, Societe Generale and UnionBank. In May 2023, Metaco was acquired by Ripple for $250 million.
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The collaboration between BBVA and Metaco began in 2021 when the technology company BBVA helped Switzerland launch crypto custody and trading services for individual clients. At the time, BBVA became the first tier-1 bank in the Eurozone to offer such services.