Two More German Banks Planning Crypto Services Following Sparkasse

Commerzbank and Volks- und Raiffeisenbank – a German universal bank and brand of cooperative banks respectively – have started developing concepts to enable customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies.

• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – a German liberal-conservative newspaper – revealed the news on Monday.
• A spokesperson for Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken said the group is “pushing ahead” on deciding whether the bank should offer crypto services, and in what form customers should be able to trade them directly.
• Meanwhile, Commerzbank said that they are working “intensively” on the subject of crypto, regarding the trading and safekeeping of digital assets.
• The bank entered a partnership with Deutsche Borse and Fintech 360x this spring, to create NFTs for existing real-life assets, like art and real estate.
• News of each bank’s crypto services follows an announcement from Sparkasse yesterday that it might launch a crypto wallet for its clients in 2022. Sparkasse is the market leader among Germany’s financial institutions, comprising a network of over 400 savings banks.
• Sparkasse, Commerzbank, and Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken together could bring easy crypto access to the vast majority of Germany’s banking market.