The Swiss branch of Arab Bank is quietly entering DeFi

The Jordan-based Arab Bank Switzerland branch is providing customers with services related to crypto assets such as AAVE, COMP, and UNI.

Arab Bank Switzerland, an affiliate of Geneva-based Middle Eastern lender Arab Bank PLC, has expanded its wealth investor-focused cryptocurrency offering to include 10 major decentralized finance (DeFi) Token.

The bank, which began offering cryptocurrency custody and brokerage services for Bitcoin and Ethereum back in 2019, announced Thursday the addition of support for fantom (FTM), aave (AAVE), compound (COMP), synthetix (SNX), chainlink (LINK) ), polygon (MATIC), the graph (GRT), curve (CRV), uniswap (UNI) and yearn finance (YFI).

Banks offering DeFi tokens to their customers is another step in the institutional DeFi narrative. Recently, Aave announced the launch of Aave Arc, whose whitelist of regulated entities is provided by hosting company Fireblocks.

While asset managers such as Bitwise offer DeFi funds, you'd be hard-pressed to find another traditional bank listing DeFi coins on the bill. (Some of the newer cryptocurrency-focused banks in Switzerland, such as Sygnum and SEBA Bank, already have DeFi tokens on the list).

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Arab Bank Switzerland Branch was established in 1962 as the first international branch of the Arab Bank Group. As of 2018, the group held $49 billion in assets. The Swiss entity manages $5 billion in assets, the spokesman said.

In addition to hosting BTC and ETH, Arab Bank Switzerland also offers staking services on the Tezos blockchain.

Romain Braud, the bank’s director of digital assets, said that offering DeFi tokens to customers is the first step to further participation in yield-generating protocols.

“The current thinking is to only allow our customers to buy, sell and hold some of the most prominent DeFi tokens,” Braud said in an interview. “But we do believe that traditional financial institutions will be replaced by these protocols in the near future, and we want to be part of that change. So in the future, we naturally want to go deeper into these kinds of decentralized services. "

The Swiss branch of Arab Bank is different from some of the newer cryptocurrency banks because it is part of a well-capitalized group and also has ties to the Middle East, Braud said.

"We have a lot of traditional clients in the Middle East," Braud said. “A bank that understands the Middle East and is also based in Switzerland is a really good combination for them.” (CoinDesk)