BBVA in Switzerland, a part of the Spanish banking giant BBVA, announced on Thursday that it has partnered with blockchain platform Metaco. The collaboration will see BBVA use Metaco’s Harmonize platform to host its crypto custody service, allowing the bank to expand its crypto trading services beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Ripple, one of the leading crypto companies in the world, acquired Metaco in May 2023. Metaco, a Swiss-based digital assets custody platform founded in 2015, launched its Harmonize platform in 2021. It offers an institutional standard for financial institutions and corporations to leverage as they build their blockchain and crypto services.
BBVA has been offering Bitcoin and Ethereum trading as well as custody since 2021. With this partnership, they will now migrate custody to Metaco’s Harmonize and expand their crypto trading service to other cryptocurrencies, as well as their tokenization product.
Alfonso Gómez, CEO of BBVA in Switzerland, said in a statement: “Our partnership with Metaco, which will fully integrate our existing infrastructure within Avaloq, allows us to stay ahead of the market, offering the most robust and compliant platform.”
Adrien Treccani, founder and CEO of Metaco, added: “Metaco and BBVA Switzerland have had a longstanding history of partnership, and we are proud to bring our partnership to new heights, enabling awarded digital asset commercial offerings that fit the unique requirements of individuals and institutions.”
Metaco has key partnerships with global banks and financial institutions, including HSBC, DZ Bank, Societe Generale and UnionBank. Recently, Standard Chartered-backed Zodia integrated Metaco. This week, the Ripple platform also partnered with computing giant IBM on the Hyper Protect Offline Signing Orchestrator (OSO), a technology that makes it easier and safer for top tier banks and financial institutions to safely deploy and handle digital assets in cold storage.
