Santander Eyes Online Business Banking Service in U.K.

By Adam Clark

Banco Santander S.A. (SAN.MC) intends to launch a digital-only service for business banking in the U.K. as it competes for a portion of the 775 million pounds ($1.05 billion) being provided by Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS.LN) to foment competition in the sector.

"As we announced at our group strategy update in October last year, we are working on a project to build an open digital financial services platform for SMEs. We are excited by opportunity to help more SMEs to prosper and we look forward to sharing more about the platform soon," said a spokesperson for Santander.

SMEs refers to small and medium-sized enterprises.

Santander is among the banks hoping for a slice of the funds RBS has been forced to provide under European Union state-aid rules relating to its bailout by the British government in 2008.

Santander is one of the largest lenders eligible to receive some of the funding, which is open to banks with assets of up to GBP350 billion in the U.K. In its first-quarter results, Santander said its U.K. operations had GBP310.50 billion in total assets.

In November, Spanish media reported that Santander also plans to extend its retail digital banking operation, Openbank, to countries outside of Spain such as the U.K.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 14, 2018 06:52 ET (10:52 GMT)

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