An Unexpected Visitor at Europe’s Massive Tech Conference: A Spanish Bank

Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Facebook Inc. -- the usual suspects -- have prominent booths at the annual Dublin Web Summit of tech giants and the upstarts who want to emulate them. This year there is a surprise entrant: Banco Santander SA.

It’s part of an effort by Spain’s largest bank to ensure that it doesn’t fall victim to disruption in the financial industry, while at the same time grabbing a piece of one of its fastest growing niches: FinTech. A growing number of startups see the banking industry as prime for upheaval, believing that by keeping costs low, they can nab customers by offering less expensive services in, for example, currency exchange, personal banking or peer-to-peer lending.