Arab Bank Switzerland invests in fintech digital asset company Taurus
Arab Bank (Switzerland) Ltd. announced its strategic investment in the Series A of Taurus Group. The bank has been leading the blockchain and digital asset offering in Switzerland. It launched a full suite of digital asset services, providing advisory, custody and brokerage services for Bitcoin and Ethereum last September, and plans to add Ripple to its offering next month. The CHF 8-digit series A was led by Arab Bank Switzerland Ltd., with additional funding from renowned strategic investors as well as existing, private investors. The co-founders remain majority shareholders.
Arab Bank Switzerland has a longstanding tradition of innovation, both in terms of business models and financial technology adapting to industry evolutions. The bank was one of the first private banks to successfully launch commodity trading operations and to offer its clients a competitive FX (foreign exchange) platform. It was also one of the first banks in Switzerland to enter the digital asset space. Serge Robin, CEO of Arab Bank (Switzerland), explains: “The financial industry of tomorrow will leverage the blockchain technology both via traditional asset tokenization and digital assets. We are excited to invest in the leading Swiss fintech offering an outstanding digital asset infrastructure, thus contributing to a much needed evolution of our industry.”
In an increasingly digital world, Arab Bank Switzerland’s first ever investment in a financial technology company is consistent with its convictions and reinforced by a shared vision with Taurus, namely that the worlds of traditional assets and digital assets are converging. Although the digital asset industry is still nascent, both companies see tremendous potential and efficiency gains for issuers, advisors, investors and financial institutions in digitalizing the financial industry by leveraging blockchain and smart contracts technologies.
Taurus Group is a Swiss fintech launched in 2018 by executives with a background in banking, asset management, regulatory, and cybersecurity. It is aiming to build one of the most robust and regulatory compliant digital asset infrastructures in the world. Its infrastructure is end-to-end and covers issuance, custody, and transfer of digital assets and its client base is composed of institutional players such as leading investment banks, private banks, commercial banks, crypto banks, technology companies and exchanges in Europe. Sebastien Dessimoz, co-Founder of Taurus Group, adds: “We are looking forward to scaling up our product and engineering teams and to opening new markets. Taurus is already well established in Switzerland and we have seen a growing demand from other European countries, including France, the United Kingdom and the DACH region.”
In September 2019 Arab Bank Swtizerland was one of the first banks to offer digital asset services.
