BBVA Switzerland, the Swiss branch of one of the largest Spanish banks, has announced that it will utilize the Harmonize platform from Ripple-owned technology company Metaco to store cryptocurrency for institutional investors.
BBVA, which has been a custody provider for Bitcoin and Ether since 2021, migrated its infrastructure to Harmonize on December 7 to increase its agility and security, as stated in the press release:
“In this environment, transaction validation is more agile and crypto assets are held in custody according to the highest security standards required by regulators.”
By allowing the bank to connect to blockchains other than Bitcoin and Ethereum, Harmonize could potentially expand BBVA’s cryptocurrency service:
“Trading on Harmonize™ opens the door to BBVA being able to offer new services in the future, such as trading of other cryptoassets in addition to bitcoin and ether, or the ‘tokenization’ of traditional assets.”
2021 saw the introduction of Harmonize by Metaco, the orchestration layer for digital asset applications. Metaco and HSBC, an additional financial institution, recently partnered to integrate Harmonize with HSBC’s new digital asset custody service.
UnionBank, DZ Bank, and Societe Generale are among the significant legacy financial institutions with which Metaco has formed partnerships. Ripple acquired Metaco in May 2023 for a combined sum of $250 million.
BBVA and Metaco commenced their collaboration in 2021 when the technology company assisted BBVA Switzerland in introducing cryptocurrency custody and trading services for individual clients. BBVA was the inaugural tier-1 bank in the eurozone to offer such services.
