Spain’s Banco Santander end-to-end blockchain bond

Spain’s multinational banking giant Banco Santander has repurchased bonds worth $ 20 million using the Ethereum blockchain.

The company made an early repayment of the blockchain-based bonds, which were issued on September 10, 2019. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate that the Ethereum public blockchain can be applied over the entire life cycle of financial assets.

“Financial assets and securities can be fully managed on a blockchain”,

announced on Twitter John Whelan, head of Digital Investment Banking in Santander.

“We have just made an early redemption of our blockchain bond that we issued on September 10, 2019. This unequivocally proves that a debt guarantee can be managed through its full life cycle on a blockchain (public in this case).”

Whelan is also the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. This global blockchain consortium provided public transactions with the block explorer Ethereum to demonstrate the transaction. Because Santander acted both as an issuer and as an investor in the transaction, Whelan disclosed transactions on the issuer’s wallet and investor wallet.

Santander issued its first end-to-end blockchain bond on September 12

The company said this technology will make bond issuance faster, more efficient and simpler. Santander also said the bond will remain on the Ethereum blockchain until the end of its one-year maturity.

Santander is not the only financial institution that has experienced the technology to issue end-to-end blockchain bonds.

In mid-November, global banking giant HSBC began exploring the use of blockchain for the issue of fixed-income securities in partnership with Singapore Exchange and investment firm Temasek.

In October, the financial services giant’s rating group Morningstar revealed that it is working on a blockchain platform for debt securities issued as tokens on a blockchain.