A Spanish multinational bank is developing the possibility of providing loans secured by tokens of agricultural products.
Banco Santander announced the creation of a system for providing loans secured by commodity tokens. The project is being developed jointly with the Argentine startup Agrotoken, which previously launched grain-backed tokens. Tokens allow manufacturers to make full-fledged transactions with goods. The bank has already carried out a test run of the system.
Santander claims that this is the first project of its kind to combine financial products with blockchain-based agricultural tokens. Agrotoken was created by three tokens: CORA, WHEA and SOYA. Each of them will be provided with a ton of grain – corn, wheat and soybeans. After the grain producer delivers the goods to the supplier, the decentralized system will issue one token.
The bank is confident that the new system will contribute to the creation of a completely new business. Thanks to it, agricultural producers will be able to directly receive financing, using their own products as collateral. Santander President Ana Botin said that fintech has become the most relevant topic for the bank. The company has allocated $225 million to upgrade its software and hardware infrastructure.
Recall that in November 2020, the Swiss company Cerealia announced the launch of a blockchain platform of the same name for trading agricultural products.
