Belgian Banking Group Creates Blockchain-Based Coin

With its headquarters located in Belgium, KBC Group is regarded as a prominent banking and insurance institution in Europe. It has now decided to venture into the world of crypto, as it recently launched a token, which is based on a blockchain platform. The new proprietary coins will be available to the banking group’s clients and they will be able to use the KBC mobile app or wallet for using them.

KBC Launches Digital Coin

The financial group based in Brussels, KBC is known for having an extensive and major presence in Eastern and Central Europe. The group has now issued their own digital token, which they have named as ‘Kate Coin’. According to the bank, a large-scale test would be considered of the coin and thousands of their employees will participate in it. They will be allowed to spend this token at a festival that is scheduled to take place this week in Belgium.

Eventually, they will roll out the coin throughout the banking and financial group. A year and a half earlier, KBC had launched their own personal digital assistant, which they had named Kate. Now, they have decided to launch a coin by the same name. The company said in a press release that the entire economy is now using new technologies, such as cryptocurrencies, web 3.0 and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for development purposes. Therefore, KBC also wants to be a part of this world and is hoping that this initiative would help it establish itself as a digital banking insurance leader.

The Target Clientele of the Coin

Since KBC is a bank and an insurer, its primary focus is on small and mid-sized businesses and private clients based in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Belgium. The customers in these regions will be able to purchase Kate coins and spend them through the company’s mobile app or their digital wallets.

Initially, the coin will only be available in the ‘closed loop’ insurance and banking environment of KBC. However, they will eventually widen the ecosystem and will also bring in the group’s enterprise customers, partners and third parties that are leveraging the mobile platform of the bank for offering their services to around 1.8 million customers.

In a statement, the KBC Group said that the Kate Coin would be powered through their digital assistant and would make the lives of their clients easier today and down the road as well. It said that the combination of the Kate Coin and Kate would allow its customers to save both time and money.

This is certainly not the first time that a digital currency has been developed by a major banking corporation. JPMorgan, the financial services firm and global investment bank, announced back in 2020 that they were also developing their own token. They named it the JPM Coin, which is also powered by blockchain technology and allows institutional clients to make payments. This is just another indication that blockchain and crypto are becoming more and more mainstream.

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