Philippines Financial Institution Unionbank Now Provides Crypto Custody and Trading Services

The Union Bank of the Philippines, Inc., more commonly known as Unionbank, announced that the financial institution launched bitcoin and ethereum custody and trading services. The ninth largest bank in the country by assets, Unionbank, will leverage Metaco’s platform Harmonize to pilot the crypto services for clients.

Unionbank to Provide Bitcoin and Ethereum Custody and Trading Services via Metaco

On Nov. 2, 2022, the Philippines-based financial institution founded in 1981, Unionbank, revealed it is now offering bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) services for customers. According to the announcement published on Wednesday, Unionbank is one of a number of select financial institutions approved by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to operate as a virtual asset service provider (VASP).

Unionbank has started the pilot with bitcoin and ethereum custody and trading services. In 2019, Unionbank launched a stablecoin pegged to the value of the Philippine peso. At the end of April 2022, Unionbank entered the metaverse economy as well. The Philippines-based universal bank Unionbank is utilizing Metaco’s platform Harmonize, which is dubbed a “digital asset custody and orchestration platform, as a fully managed service deployed in the cloud.” Metaco’s Harmonize will “manage governance and operations for the [Unionbank] pilot.

“Unionbank’s collaboration with its strategic partner Metaco has been critical in the bank’s pursuit of realizing its vision of delivering superior, customer-centric services to the Philippine market,” Henry Aguda, the chief technology and operations officer and chief transformation officer at Unionbank, remarked. “We are proud to continue UnionBank’s series of industry firsts, this time being the first regulated bank in the country allowing digital currency exchange feature for clients.”

Unionbank aims to expand the service in the future as it wants to craft a “safe and compliant environment for millions of Filipinos to custody and exchange digital currencies such as bitcoin.” The Philippines-based financial institution said it is readying itself for “wider rollouts of its digital asset services” while at the same time “future-proofing its business model.”

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