Santander – a UK-based financial institution – has announced it’s not going to allow any crypto exchange payments beginning in 2023. Thus, anyone who has a crypto wallet tied to their traditional bank account that tries to wire money to an attached crypto exchange to purchase assets will instantly be blocked.
Santander Clearly Doesn’t Like Crypto
The organization is taking a lot of flak for the maneuver, with many traders and investors claiming that the bank should not be allowed to decide what its customers can spend their money on. Beginning next year, all real-time payments to crypto exchanges will not be permitted through Santander accounts, and this is just another notch on the old “England hates crypto” ladder that’s been growing exponentially over the last few years.
A spokesperson for Santander issued the following statement regarding the company’s recent decision:
Keeping our customers safe from cryptocurrency scams is a top priority. We intend to further protect customers by blocking all faster payments we identify to cryptocurrency exchanges from Santander accounts. This will be implemented during 2023.
The United Kingdom has not always been the friendliest country when it comes to digital assets. Not long ago, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – a regulatory agency for the United Kingdom – announced that all bitcoin and crypto-based ATMs would be illegal in the country. In a statement, the FCA explained:
None of the crypto asset firms registered with us have been approved to offer crypto ATM services, meaning that any of them operating in the U.K. are doing so illegally and consumers should not be using them… We regularly warn consumers that crypto assets are unregulated and high-risk, which means people are very unlikely to have any protection if things go wrong, so people should be prepared to lose all their money if they choose to invest in them.
The FCA and the United Kingdom regularly stand against crypto trading and all related issues claiming that as they are not regulated, they cannot be trusted. This has been the main reason both entities have taken such hard stances against this growing industry, and while to an extent we can understand where they’re coming, it can be argued that the United Kingdom is suffering from a lack of crypto innovation.
The UK Isn’t Kind to Crypto
While Santander is now making headlines with its decision, it’s not the first bank in the UK to limit crypto-based activity. Customers will still be able to receive payouts to their bank accounts from crypto exchanges, though sending companies money directly through Santander is another story.
This is still more than what the company will allow with firms like Binance, which continues to see all its transactions from Santander-based accounts blocked fully following the implementation of new regulatory tactics in July of last year.
Source: https://www.livebitcoinnews.com/santander-is-ending-all-payments-to-crypto-exchanges/