Puerto Rico welcomes a new institution catering to traders of cryptocurrency as San Juan Mercantile Bank & Trust International (SJMBT) is now open for business; SJMBT accepted its first client deposit on Monday.
The Puerto Rico-based firm earned a License as an International financial entity (IFE) last month, by Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commission of Financial Institutions (OCIF). SJMBT is a unit of Mercantile Global Holdings (MGH), who also owns San Juan Mercantile Exchange (SJMX). The latter is a soon-to-be-launched “institutional-grade electronic trading platform for digital assets.”
The bank will include custody and settlement services for both fiat and crypto traded on the exchange. While SJMBT itself is not insured by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), a spokesperson stated that it will place clients’ deposits at correspondent banks that are.
Additionaly, as per the company, customers’ digital assets will be held at “approved digital asset custodians,” the spokesperson did not reveal the name of any bank’s correspondents or custodians, nor its initial clients.
MGH added that keeping custody and trading under the same roof will avail certain benefits. For example, the exchange will take into account customer balances on deposit at the bank when setting trading limits, enabling the bank to settle trades in real time. Nick Varelakis, president and chief operating officer of SJMB&T, stated:
“As more liquidity venues onboard with SJMX to trade digital assets, SJMBT will provide critical services, such as real-time settlement and account re-balancing, in support of our customers’ trading activities.”
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