Union Bank of the Philippines, Inc., better known by its common name Unionbank, recently announced the launch of bitcoin and ethereum custody services 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 will provide Bitcoin and Ethereum Custody and Trading Services through Metaco
Unionbank (a Philippines-based financial institution that was founded in 1981) announced on November 2, 2022 that they now offer bitcoin (BTC and ethereum [ETH] services to their customers. On Wednesday’s announcement, Unionbank became one of a select number of financial institutions that Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas approved to offer virtual asset services (VASP).
Unionbank started the pilot using bitcoin and ethereum for custody and trading. Unionbank introduced a stablecoin in 2019 that was pegged to the Philippine peso’s value. Unionbank joined the metaverse economy at the close of April 2022. 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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