Santander, BBVA, Openbank and Western Union discuss blockchain's real-world use at MERGE Madrid

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On 27 October the Bolsa de Madrid hosted the Institutional Summit of MERGE Madrid 2026, the first of three days, where traditional banks and digital-asset firms considered whether blockchain has moved from trials to actual deployment.

Openbank, Santander's digital bank, started offering crypto partly because customers were taking their assets to rival platforms. General manager Gonzalo Pradas said uptake among traditional investors beat expectations and credited the EU's MiCA rules with giving banks legal certainty. Malcolm Clarke, Western Union's global head of digital assets, said the company moves roughly $103 billion a year across 160 countries and is building its own stablecoin for remittance recipients, preferring to keep control of governance, risk and compliance. BBVA's Francisco Maroto said "stablecoins are already here", with the bank using them for near-term cross-border payments and treating tokenised deposits as a later project.

Forecasts were less unanimous. Santander's Coty de Monteverde ranked blockchain's advantages as round-the-clock availability, then speed, then cost, noted that running it alongside existing systems can add expense, and estimated it could carry about 2% of cross-border payment flows within three years. Luis Ayala, BitGo's Latin America head, offered 20% to 30%, which leaves some room for discussion.