Spain’s second-largest financial institution, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) will quickly allow prospects to purchase, promote and handle Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions by way of its app.
The service will initially be rolled out to “a small group of customers” and steadily prolonged to all of the financial institution’s personal prospects in Spain over the approaching months.
The transfer follows BBVA satisfying all the necessities of the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Belongings Regulation (MiCA) and finishing the mandatory formalities with the Spanish Securities and Change Fee (CNMV).
The financial institution didn’t point out when it plans to roll out the service for patrons apart from those that signed up for personal banking, that means the brand new options are solely related for many who can show they meet the financial institution’s wealth necessities, a minimum of within the brief time period.
BBVA has provided comparable providers in Switzerland since 2021, however once more solely to the group’s personal banking prospects, and in Turkey (by its Garanti BBVA Kripto subsidiary) since January 2025.
Banks and crypto
Apart from Revolut, which has been providing crypto buying and selling to retail shoppers in lots of markets way back to 2017, it’s nonetheless pretty uncommon to see a mainstream financial institution supply crypto buying and selling for non-institutional shoppers. BBVA is among the many largest European banks by belongings.
Some banks already supply a mixture of crypto buying and selling and conventional banking providers, comparable to Switzerland’s Dukascopy Financial institution, however many, like Switzerland’s AMINA, model themselves explicitly as “crypto banks.”
However even when they’re not providing crypto buying and selling to their shoppers instantly, extra established historic European banks are providing crypto providers now that the introduction of MiCA has supplied extra regulatory readability.
Final month, multinational financial institution Normal Chartered introduced a brand new entity primarily based in Luxembourg, providing crypto and digital asset custody providers within the European Union.
In the meantime, different recognizable European banks are making vital Bitcoin purchases so as to add to their company treasuries. In January, Italy’s largest financial institution, Intesa Sanpaolo, bought 11 BTC value €1 million euros ($1 million), turning into the primary Italian financial institution to make a direct funding within the cryptocurrency.
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