Earlier this week, HSBC, one of the world’s largest financial and banking service organizations, announced its plan to introduce a new digital assets custody service to allow its institutional clients to store their assets’ cryptographic keys.
Digital asset custody is essentially the concept of a digital wallet that stores two types of keys – public and private. Institutional clients at HSBC who invest in digital tokenized securities can use the new digital assets custody service to hold and manage their digital assets with additional security securely.
HSBC plans to take this live next year and will accompany the organization’s platform known as HSBC Orion for issuing virtual assets. It will also complement the recently HSBC-launched product for tokenized physical gold.
HSBC is currently operating with Metaco, an enterprise tech company in Switzerland, to utilize Metaco’s Harmonize as a part of the new custody service on HSBC for virtual assets. The solutions on Harmonize will help unify the management and security of virtual asset operations. These will form a whole digital asset offering for institutional clients on the bank’s digital platform.
HSBC Holdings plc. is HSBC’s parent company, headquartered in London, UK, serving clients worldwide and operating in 62 territories and countries. As of September 30, 2023, HSBC has become one of the world’s largest financial and banking services organizations, with assets of more than $3000 billion.
Metaco, developed in Switzerland in 2015, is an enterprise tech company that aims to allow non-financial and financial institutions to develop digital asset operations safely. The company’s core product, Harmonize, is an orchestration platform that offers trading, tokenization, smart contract management, staking, and asset-agnostic custody. It also seamlessly connects real-world institutions with decentralized applications and decentralized finance.
Metaco has built a brand name for itself as an institutional standard for virtual asset infrastructure, relied on and trusted by well-known global banks, regulated exchanges, custodians, and corporates. Its technology and software solutions allow institutions to issue, manage, store, and trade all digital assets, including digital currencies and cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens or NFTs, and digital securities. It offers the highest levels of agility and security.