Brazilian digital bank Nubank announced Wednesday it plans to roll out its own cryptocurrency in Brazil in 2023 as a part of the bank’s upcoming customer rewards program. With the move, Nubank becomes the latest major financial institution to launch a native token and drive crypto adoption.
Nubank Introduces Nucoin to “Democratize” Blockchain Technology
Nubank, the largest fintech bank in Latin America, said it will launch its own cryptocurrency as a part of its customer rewards program next year. The token, dubbed Nucoin, represents “a new way to recognize customer loyalty and encourage engagement with Nubank products,” the bank said in a press release.
“This project is another step ahead in our belief in the transformative potential of blockchain technology and to democratize it even more.”
– Fernando Czapski, General Manager for Nucoin at Nubank
The bank will offer Nucoin owners various discounts and perks as they accumulate more tokens. The cryptocurrency is expected to launch in the first half of 2023, Nubank said.
Decentralized Ethereum-powered scaling platform Polygon will provide the technology for the launch of Nucoin, said Nubank. The bank, backed by legendary investor Warren Buffet, will pick roughly 2,000 customers within the next month to test the new cryptocurrency.
“In this phase, more than feedback, the proposal is to explore a decentralized process of product creation, characteristic of Web3.”
Nubank said.
Crypto Adoption Continues to Expand in Latin America
Nubank’s announcement comes a few months after Latin American e-commerce firm MercadoLibre unveiled its own cryptocurrency MercardoCoin as a part of the company’s loyalty program. MercadoCoin can be traded on crypto exchanges, though it remains unclear whether Nucoin will also be exchangeable.
Nubank’s push into crypto marks another big financial institution launching a native cryptocurrency. The move comes amid a very difficult period for crypto assets, which have been hitting new lows amid a difficult macroeconomic environment involving high inflation and interest rates.
In May, Nubank teamed up with Paxos to allow its customers to invest in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). The bank said its crypto trading service attracted 1.8 million customers just months after the launch.
The ongoing crypto winter did not stop some financial services giants from pushing deeper into the space. In August, the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock announced its partnership with Coinbase to offer crypto trading services to institutional investors.
This article originally appeared on The Tokenist
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