Deutsche WertpapierService Bank AG (dwpbank), the German securities services provider, has launched its “wpNex” platform for digital assets, following a pilot transaction based on bitcoin for retail customers.
The first component of the wpNex platform is an offer for trading cryptocurrencies.
dwpbank plans to gradually expand wpNex to maintain banks’ connection to its facilities. Through the platform, banks will be able to include the regulated trading of other digital assets in their services for retail customers.
The launch of wpNex enables around 1200 banks in Germany to develop opportunities to trade digital assets for themselves and their customers.
The platform was developed with valantic Financial Services Automation (FSA), a firm specialising in workflow automation, which provided the underlying automatic and integration technology.
The valantic automation platform allows existing core banking systems of affiliated banks to connect with the trading system of the execution broker, the wallet provider and the settlement service provider.
In this instance, the execution broker is Bankhaus Scheich, the wallet provider, Tangany, and the settlement provider is dwpbank. This enables an automated workflow between the parties, allowing each bank to provide customers access to cryptocurrency trading through their existing systems.
valantic FSA says this dramatically reduces the cost per transaction, which is usually a two-digit euro amount per transaction on the blockchain.
Heiko Beck, CEO of dwpbank, says “Regardless of how the market for cryptocurrencies will continue to develop, digitised values will become increasingly important in the future. That's why we're expanding our range of services in this area and gearing our portfolio more closely to the future opportunities that are available here."
