Damien Kantor
08/23/2021 7:22 PM
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 08/23/2021 7:50 PM
"We already have our bags ready for Argentina!"
.
With this brief proclamation, Banco Santander announced the imminent arrival in the country of Openbank,
its 100% digital bank
.
Although there was no official announcement, the promise was kept.
The virtual entity is already operational but as part of the last tests before its final launch
, scheduled for before the end of the year.
Initially, the Openbank will offer savings banks, debit cards and services such as transfers, ATMs and electronic payments,
all in a discounted way as part of the launch
, that is, at no cost. Then they will add others, as they scale in the market and depending on the development of the technological platform.
Openbank is the 5th virtual bank in the local market
, and follows the path opened by Brubank, Wilobank (in the process of merging with Ualá), Banco del Sol and Reba (from the Transatlántica group). "
It is a fintech, but it has the license and authorization from the Central Bank to operate,
" they told Clarín. For this reason, it
has the possibility of taking deposits and offering loans
, something that virtual wallets and other financial apps cannot do.
The landing of the Openbank was delayed due to technical difficulties
. But now he is advancing at a steady pace. Led by the former CEO of Google Federico Procaccini, the entity clarifies that "although we are part of the Santander group, it
will operate completely independently
." This is what they do in the other 4 countries where they coexist:
Spain, Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands
. After Argentina, Santander plans to expand it to 5 other countries, including the United States and Mexico.
The Openbank application
is available on the Play Store
, but
its use is still restricted to a small group of executives and clients
. The reason is that it operates under the
"family & friends"
format
, a common practice to test and correct problems on critical platforms, such as financial ones. "As the days go by, we will add more people until its full implementation," they point out.
Like any digital bank, Openbank will not have physical branches. It aims above all at capturing
the "neglected public"
by traditional banking, especially the young. Today they have 50 employees, but they are expanding the workforce "and there are many people in Spain collaborating for the project in Argentina," they comment. An industrial engineer graduated from ITBA, Procaccini was Business Development Manager for Mercado Pago and General Director of Mercado Libre for Argentina and the rest of the region.
This year,
Santander invested almost 170 million euros
to finance Openbank's international expansion to underpin international expansion plans. Argentina is the first destination outside of Europe. It had already landed in Germany in 2019, and in Holland and Portugal last year. The strategic plan, as announced by the group, is to reach ten new markets in the next two years.