Swiss cryptocurrency bank SEBA has expanded into nine new countries just one month after becoming fully operational.
SEBA announced the news in a statement released to the media. The company said that institutional clients and companies in Hong Kong, Singapore, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands and Austria can now open new accounts. SEBA also provides services to corporates, professional private investors and asset managers. The bank had already clarified its plans to expand into specific international countries in November last year.
SEBA began operations in April 2018 and received a banking license from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) in August. At the time, SEBA said it was proud to have developed and established a bank in just 18 months. The company also successfully raised approximately $100.5 million from investors.
In its statement on Thursday, SEBA explained that there is still a huge gap between decentralized finance and traditional banking mediums. SEBA said this is still true even more than a decade after the invention of Bitcoin.
The crypto bank offers a wide range of features that customers can access through the banking company. The bank offers traditional electronic banking services, as well as the SEBA wallet app and SEBA card facility. With the card facility, customers can access more than 43 million points of sale worldwide. In view of this, SEBA describes itself as an important step in the mainstreaming of cryptocurrencies.
On SEBA, customers can access five cryptocurrencies: Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Stellar (XLM), and Ethereum Classic (ETC). From there, customers can exchange these different forms of cryptocurrencies for traditional fiat currencies and vice versa. SEBA also offers corporate accounts to Swiss blockchain companies and their employees.
Sygnum is SEBA’s main competitor in the crypto banking industry. Sygnum received a Swiss license in August last year and started operations the following month. Sygnum also received a capital markets services license in Singapore, enabling it to provide asset management services in the country. The company plans to initially offer a multi-manager fund to efficiently allocate various investments to a portfolio of investment managers. Sygnum is able to issue and store Bitcoin and Ethereum, which is very similar to SEBA in this regard.
What this means for the future is unclear, but SEBA and its competitors are pioneers in the cryptocurrency industry, allowing others to follow in their footsteps.
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