Spanish banking giant Banco Santander last week announced its plans to leverage blockchain and other cutting-edge technologies within its capital markets business to transform how securities are issued, traded and settled.

The bank has set up a new ‘Digital Investment Banking’ team within Santander Corporate & Investment Banking. The key objective of the new team is to ensure that the bank is employing the latest technologies, including “exploring the use of tokenized securities in debt capital markets, derivatives and other products,” the press release said.

The team will be led by John Whelan, director of Banco Santander’s blockchain lab.

“The wave of digitalization that is occurring in the financial industry is accelerating. Our clients expect this to result in better solutions, lower costs and new categories of products and services that enable them to access capital markets more efficiently than ever before. We want to offer our clients what they expect from us,” José M. Linares, Santander’s senior executive vice-president and global head of Santander Corporate & Investment Banking, said.

Santander is a founding member of several blockchain consortia, including Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, Alastria, we.trade and Utility Settlement Coin. Recently, we.trade has announced that the first live trade transactions have been conducted on its platform.

In April 2018, Banco Santander launched a new blockchain-based international payments service, Santander One Pay FX. The bank has also utilized blockchain technology for investor voting at its annual general meeting (AGM) this year.