On November 2, the leading provider of digital asset management technology to complex, global financial institutions, METACO announced that Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank), one of the largest universal banks in the Philippines, has gone live on METACO’s flagship platform, Harmonize, to pilot the launch of crypto services for its customers. 

The Philippines-based financial institution established in 1981, Unionbank, uncovered it is presently offering BTC and ETH services for clients. As per the declaration published on Wednesday, Unionbank is one of the various select monetary foundations supported by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to work as a virtual asset service provider (VASP). 

Unionbank has begun the pilot with bitcoin and Ethereum custody and trading services. A stablecoin was launched by Unionbank pegged to the value of the Philippine peso in 2019. Unionbank entered the metaverse economy as well toward the end of April 2022. The Philippines-based universal bank Unionbank is using Metaco’s platform Harmonize, which is named a digital asset custody and orchestration platform, as a fully managed service deployed in the cloud. Metaco’s Harmonize will oversee operations and governance for the [Unionbank] pilot. 

“Unionbank’s collaboration with its strategic partner Metaco has been critical in the bank’s pursuit of realizing its vision of delivering superior, customer-centric services to the Philippine market,” Henry Aguda, the chief technology and operations officer and chief transformation officer at Unionbank, remarked. “We are proud to continue UnionBank’s series of industry firsts, this time being the first regulated bank in the country allowing digital currency exchange feature for clients.” 

Unionbank means to extend the service in the future as it needs to create a “safe and compliant environment for millions of Filipinos to custody and exchange digital currencies such as bitcoin.” The Philippines-based financial institution said it is preparing itself for “wider rollouts of its digital asset services” while at the same time “future-proofing its business model.”