Garanti BBVA, which claims to be a leading force in digitization in the Turkish banking industry, has announced the launching of Garanti BBVA Digital Assets, the first venture of its subsidiary Garanti BBVA Financial Technologies.
With a pilot already in progress, the company will initially “provide services for transfer and custody of bitcoin and ether in the crypto-assets market.”
Garanti BBVA Digital Assets chairman of the Board M. Çağrı Süzer said:
“‘Our purpose is to bring the age of opportunity to everyone, based on our customers’ real needs. Given the interest of our customers to digital assets, we took the decision to form a sizeable team that focuses on developing state of the art blockchain technologies. Within this context, Garanti BBVA Digital Assets, the new venture of Garanti BBVA Financial Technologies, started its activities as the first investment of a bank in Türkiye.”
The firm’s research shows “that customers significantly value trust in their crypto transactions and especially on its storage.”
Hence, they are happy to launch their Crypto Custody Wallet “addressing these real needs.”
The firm added:
“Our app is now live with its beta version. It will provide custody services for BTC and Ether at first, and will keep expanding with new products and services.”
As covered last month, Iberpay and Spanish banks such as BBVA, Santander and CaixaBank have carried out the first test of this pioneering service in Europe in anticipation of the official entry into force, on November 28th, of the new One-Leg-Out Instant Credit Transfer (OCT Inst) scheme of the European Payment Council (EPC).
The objective is to improve these international payments, “in line with the guidelines of several global bodies such as the G7, G20, Financial Stability Board (FSB), Basel Bank for International Settlements (BIS), European Commission, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.”
During this pilot phase of the service, dozens of actual payments “originating from banks in other currency areas (National Australia Bank, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, Itaú Unibanco in Brazil and Lloyds Banking Group in the UK) and sent through the Swift GPI Instant service have been processed, settled, and credited in a matter of seconds to the ultimate beneficiary customer’s account, thanks to the final delivery of the payment through Iberpay’s instant transfer service.”