The finance arm of Swisscom wants to take a share of the cryptocurrency market and is developing on a custody solution.
Swisscom, the country’s dominant telecommunications company, has founded Custodigit, according to the company registry. Custodigit will provide access, transaction and storage solutions for digital assets and means of payment.
The company was founded at the end of October. Peter Hofmann, an IT entrepreneur based near Zurich, is acting CEO. Roger Wuethrich, the chief digital officer at Swisscom, is listed as chairman of Custodigit.
High-Profile Investors
The technological brain behind Custodigit is a fintech that has already featured prominently in the media, including on finews.com: Sygnum. The Swiss-Singaporian venture has won Swisscom and Daura as partners.
Risk-capital expert Mathias Imbach and ex-Wegelin banker Manuel Krieger are running Sygnum, a company that also boasts of high-profile investors such as Peter Wuffli, Philipp Hildebrand and venture fund Singtel Innov8, which is based in Singapore.
First Product Launch
The main targets for the new firm are banks and wealth managers that want to give their clients access to cryptocurrencies and other digital products.
Apart from the storage of data in Swisscom’s processing center, Custodigit will provide regulatory services and enable the compliance with regulatory demands. At the outset the company will focus on the storage and access to cryptocurrencies.
Avaloq Link Possible
The company later will add the facility to store further digital assets, for instance digital equities; Daura, a unit of Swisscom, is developing such a facility.
Custodigit is also mulling a link-up with the core-banking systems provided by Avaloq and Finnova. Avaloq launched its own crypto-storage solution for banks last week. The company aims to further expand the solution with Metaco and Gazprombank.
Cusodigit will probably launch its product sometime during the first quarter of 2019.