Banco Galicia, which is one of the largest banks in Argentina, has reportedly become the first bank in the South American nation to offer a crypto trading service to its clients.

The only four cryptoassets that customers can currently buy, sell, or hold are Bitcoin ($BTC), Ether ($ETH), USD Coin ($USDC), and XRP, although the bank says that it does not rule out supporting other cryptoassets in the future.

Banco Galicia — founded in 1905 — calls itself “the most important Argentine private bank”, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Grupo Financiero Galicia, which is “a financial services holding company based in Buenos Aires.”

On May 2, Argentine economist Ignacio Esteban Carballo tweeted some screenshot images from the bank’s new crypto service:

He then give some details about the company providing the custody service:

“For the curious: Custody by an external firm. Like Paxos with PayPal in the USA and Mercado Pago, here it is called Lirium. Initially it will only be a closed circuit (purchase and sale of pesos-crypto without mobility between users/platform). We’ll have to see how it goes…

“Lirium is a GREAT company with a lot of Argentine and Latin American talent forming part of it (many ex-Xapo). As Paxos advances as the preponderant player in the world, it is good to see the market for regional providers developing.“

He went on to say:

“It was like “an open secret” that banks and Fintech were exploring this model after international cases such as PayPal, Robinhood, Mercado Pago, BBVA. The surprising thing is that the first step is from a Bank. And it begins to generate a domino effect…

“Once the “Crypto-as-a-Service” model is enabled, we will surely see this development soon in almost all financial players that seek to stand out in innovation. What does this mean? That the only-crypto players should also differentiate themselves. In short: THE BEST IS YET TO COME!“

Finally, he posted the following image of the bank’s announcement of the new service, which contains the following explanation for why this service was introduced:

“We carried out a survey of our clients and more than 60% want to incorporate these assets into their investment portfolio, with the youngest public being the one that most demands them.“

A few hours later, Brubank, a digital Argentine bank headquartered in Buenos Aires, tweeted that it also had started the rollout of a crypto trading service to select clients:

The cryptoassets currently supported by Brubank are $BTC, $ETH, $USDC, and $DAI:

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.

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Featured Image by “HalloweenHJB” via Pixabay.com