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WEG Bank AG, a Germany-based bank, is planning to start processing cryptocurrency payments for retailers in 2020, CoinDesk reported.
The bank, which is partially owned by blockchain firms Nimiq, TokenPay, and the Litecoin Foundation, obtained a cryptocurrency trading and custody license in Estonia in August this year.
Speaking to CoinDesk, WEG Bank AG CEO Matthias von Hauff said that they are currently accepting applications from retailers for a sandbox test group. The planning and implementation of the sandbox model will be conducted in close cooperation with the German BaFin.
“You don’t have to be a customer of the bank,” he explained. “All we do is provide the regulatory framework in the background, to make sure when the retailer receives crypto, he actually receives fiat in his bank account, if he chooses.”
Austrian payment service provider Salamantex today announced its collaboration with WEG Bank AG’s fintech arm TEN31 to “offer customers the option of paying for goods and services with cryptocurrencies at numerous point-of-sale locations.”
von Hauff said that the program will initially support bitcoin, litecoin and several other crypto assets. He further revealed plans to go beyond point-of-sale terminals, adding, “We will do online checkout, ATMs and we are currently investigating the option to integrate a [crypto] exchange into the bank as well.”
Earlier this year, Nimiq announced that it was working with WEG Bank AG and Agora.Trade, Swiss-Maltese non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange on OASIS, which provides blockchain compatible functionality to fiat current accounts without the need to use a stablecoin as intermediary step.
“What we envision with OASIS is that we are able to create a non-custodial connection between the blockchain world and the traditional bank or bank-account world,” Nimiq co-founder Elion Chin told CoinDesk. “The goal is to have the first OASIS mainnet test with WEG Bank AG and Agora by 2020.”
Furthermore, TokenPay CEO Derek Capo told CoinDesk that they are looking forward to working with WEG Bank to integrate eFIN, a cross-chain noncustodial DEX.
According to the official website, TEN31 Bank will be launched by the end of this month. In an announcement on Twitter, von Hauff offered to pay 500k NIM and 2k TPay to the first person who will guess why the name “TEN31” was chosen.
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