Pedro Pablo Aparicio

EXCLUSIVE – Interview with Francisco Maroto, Head of Digital Assets at BBVA, the first bank in Europe to offer custody & trading to its retail clients👇 What sets BBVA apart from other banks in Europe? 👉 First to offer trading & custody for BTC & ETH to retail (Spanish) clients 👉 All integrated within the same banking app 👉 The entire infrastructure was built in-house A must-read for European bankers 👀 . "For many banks, offering crypto used to feel too risky, reputationally. But the environment has shifted. MiCA brought clarity. Public understanding has matured. We now see crypto as another asset class, and believe that in 1–2 years, most banks, traditional and digital, will offer it in some form." “We started in Switzerland in 2021 because FINMA had a clear regulatory framework, and our Swiss operation is a small private bank, ideal for testing. Once that proved successful, we expanded to Turkey. That was a market-driven decision. Inflation, high crypto adoption, and stablecoin usage made Turkey a natural next step." "Our long-term goal isn’t just to serve BBVA clients. We’re building infrastructure that can support the broader ecosystem. Just like we already offer traditional custody services to other institutions, we plan to do the same with crypto, making our infrastructure available to other banks and regulated players." You can find the full interview on Blockstories via the link in the first comment below👇

178

20 comentarios

Spain just made European tokenization real — and it’s all happening on Polygon. Beself Brands, has launched BeToken officially as the first euro-based tokenized investment fund in the EU with full regulatory approval. What makes this a milestone? > Licensed as a European Investment Manager > Registered with CNMV (Spain’s Financial Markets Regulator) > Custody managed by a regulated Spanish bank > Fully compliant with MiFID II and MiCA-aligned frameworks This isn’t a sandbox pilot or a testnet simulation. This is real, compliant, on-chain finance — already live and operating under EU law. Built on Polygon PoS, BeToken leverages low fees, scalability, and ecosystem composability to make euro-based tokenized funds accessible across Europe. For other European fund managers, asset servicers, and TradFi institutions — this is your signal. It’s no longer about if tokenization will happen. It’s about who’s already doing it — and BeToken is showing the way. Polygon Labs is proud to power this shift. Let's build the on-chain capital markets Europe deserves. You can read more about it in the article: https://lnkd.in/gKacmidc

80

2 comentarios

Agentic Commerce: “when your AI shops, BNPL and PoS Financing solutions could becomes everyday money💰” As consumer agents move from recommending to transacting; finance solutions like BNPL transition from being checkout options into “programmable cashflow” feature for daily spend What the data already says (before agents even arrive): ❇️ In the Tabby | تابي study, 77% of users say they’ll definitely use BNPL more for essential shopping this year, with another 17% “likely.” The text notes no meaningful difference by age or gender; this is broad-based behavior (see chart on page 4) ❇️ Essential purchases already outweigh discretionary ones, and in Saudi Arabia the shift is strongest (66% of first orders and 67% of total orders are essentials vs 61%/51% in the UAE). The report also highlights cash-flow management and not convenience as the main reason in KSA (page 7) ❇️ The summary (page 8) calls BNPL a money management tool helping shoppers plan monthly spending rather than just impulse buys —————— Why I am suggesting that “agentic commerce” will 10× embedded finance (and its “naughty posterchild,” BNPL) provided the policymakers don’t halt the progress: ⏺️ Autonomous budgeting: Agents will run rolling cash-flow forecasts and pick installments only when they smooth liquidity vs. income cycles which will turn BNPL into automatic bill-smoothing, not impulse fuel ⛽️ ⏺️ Dynamic tender routing: Agents will choose the optimal rail (A2A, wallet, card, BNPL line) per basket, fee, and settlement— this will result in BNPL getting picked far more often for daily spends when it beats alternatives on net cost + cash-flow ⏺️ Contextual underwriting: With permissioned first-party data, agents continuously update affordability signals, enabling micro-limits and shorter plans for everyday spend which means safer growth with lower loss rates ⏺️ Invisible UX: Agents collapse the checkout. Friction drops to zero, and “pay in 4” becomes a default setting, not a decision while driving frequency and retention ⏺️ Merchant economics: Agents will optimize for total basket conversion and repeat rate; merchants will surface BNPL earlier (search), fund incentives, and accept instant settle BNPL to cut working capital friction ⏺️ New use cases: Subscriptions, utility bills, school fees, fuel/top-ups, transit, micro-health, mid-ticket categories become more BNPL-friendly when orchestrated by agents ⏺️ Programmable safeguards: Hard limits, repayment autopay, and real-time nudges are coded into the agent which means growth with guardrails (so enough of the negative rhetoric) —————— So what? Agentic commerce in my opinion has the ability to upgrade embedded finance to “always-on financial choreography.” If essentials are already the majority of BNPL usage today, agents will accelerate the shift from discretionary to daily, making BNPL an operating system for household cashflow 💸 Hosam | Litesh | Zain | Oliver | Christoph | Sanjiv | Sami | Khalil | Ramana

82

9 comentarios

I’ve been reviewing the latest Dune report on the digital payments market in Latin America and how the infrastructure (especially stablecoins) is being used as a practical tool in everyday life. Some key points: • Between 2021 and 2024, flows through LATAM exchanges grew 9x, from $3B to $27B. • In July 2025, USDT and USDC accounted for over 90% of transferred volume, consolidating stablecoins as the financial backbone of the region. • In Brazil, stablecoins pegged to the real moved $906M through July 2025, nearly matching the total for 2024, while in Mexico, peso-pegged stablecoins reached $34M, a 638x YoY increase. • The number of transfers using BRL-pegged stablecoins grew from 5,000 in 2021 to over 1.2 million in 2025. These numbers show how LATAM is building a multi-chain financial infrastructure backed by stablecoins, allowing millions to protect, optimize, and use their capital in daily life, especially in unstable economies. In practice, what we see at Lumx is adoption driven by efficiency, inclusion, and real-world usage, and each number in the report helps us understand where the opportunities are and how to position ourselves strategically. And you: are you paying attention to how this transformation could impact your market? Link to the report in the comments

27

1 comentario