FV Debuts Puerto Rico’s 1st Bank-Based Digital Asset Custody Service

Puerto Rico’s FV Bank has launched digital asset custody and settlement services for clients around the world, becoming the first bank in the commonwealth to do so.

The company announced the rollout in a news release Wednesday (Nov. 9), saying it was launching initially with bitcoin as the first supported digital asset, with ethereum, Circle’s USD Coin, and USDT custody expected to follow soon.

Now granted approval to offer settlements between digital assets and fiat currencies, FV is “now a full-service bank and a digital asset custodian,” the company said.

“The infrastructure we are delivering to the marketplace will help bridge the divide between the traditional financial sector and the digital asset economy and will accelerate digital asset adoption globally,” said Miles Paschini, CEO of FV Bank.

In September, FV Bank introduced a service for account holders that allows them to instantly convert USD Coin into American dollars upon deposit.

“This service will greatly reduce the friction of domestic, and especially, international settlements as the money transfer process becomes dramatically faster than the traditional banking sector,” the company said at the time.

FV Bank’s product rollouts come at a time when crypto companies are looking at how they might — or might not — disrupt the cross-border payments sector, PYMNTS reported Wednesday.

Jim Nguyen, CEO and co-founder of global payments FinTech Six Clovers, told PYMNTS he is in the latter category and does not think blockchain is going to take over the business as many others predict.

“Blockchain will absolutely play a part in the future of cross-border payments. It’s happening today already, but it’s not going to replace it,” he said. “All of the existing rails that exist today will still exist. Blockchain will be additive to the infrastructure today.”

But disruption possibilities are there, said Guillermo Vicandi, chief executive and co-founder of neobank and infrastructure developer Bnext. On the whole, finance is the industry blockchain technology has the most potential to reshape.

“I also think that there’s a tendency now of trying to put everything on the blockchain, and it probably doesn’t work for everything,” Vicandi said, adding that cross-border payments and remittance is a key target.

“For some countries in Latin America, remittances represent around 20% of their GDP,” Vicandi said. “So, it’s a massive corridor, and it’s a massive inflow of funds for some countries” and yet “it’s still a bit slow, and it’s still very expensive.”

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