In the wake of El Salvador's embrace of bitcoin, one of the country's leading banks has enlisted the company behind the Open Bank Project to help facilitate adoption of the cryptocurrency.
Last month, El Salvador became the world's first country to accept bitcoin as legal tender, a move that has required the financial sector to scramble to adapt.
State-owned Banco Hipotecario has teamed up with open-source API specialists Open Bank Project, which has in turn called in its partner API3 to help provide bitcoin-enabled open banking services.
The alliance has selected Qredo's decentralised custodial infrastructure to power bitcoin banking. Meanwhile, Sovryn - the bitcoin-native decentralised trading and lending platform - will provide the financial services framework for traditional banks to build applications (dApps) offering DeFi services such as lending, swaps, and trading.
Celina Padilla, president, Bank Hipotecario, says: “We are closer than ever to achieving true financial inclusion and I am proud that Banco Hipotecario is the first bank at the national level to carry out this type of alliance. Now everyone has their eyes on our country and on our bank.”
Simon Redfern, founder, Open Bank Project, adds: “Our combined technologies will help Banco Hipotecario deliver more transparent and inclusive financial services to Salvadorans - especially the underbanked part of the population - and will remove many of the uncertainties that stand between El Salvador and the advantages of cryptocurrency adoption.”