With the adoption of crypto increasing day by day, more and more banks across the globe are lining up to offer cryptocurrency services to their clients.
In the latest development, Switzerland’s fifth largest retail bank, PostFinance is all set to launch services in which their 2.69 million clients will be able to trade in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by 2024.
PostFinance is a banking arm of Switzerland’s Post Office and their acceptance of Bitcoin and crypto is seen as a very positive development for making crypto a mainstream venture.
Commenting on this, PostFinance’s head of retail banking Sandra Lienhart said, with the growing institutionalization of cryptocurrencies over the past 18 months, this is the right time to enter the market.
There was a demand from our clients that they wanted direct access to the crypto market and we are working to provide this, Lienhart said.
The bank has already had a partnership with Swissquote for offering cryptocurrency services and built a digital application, Yuh, which allowed the bank’s clients to enter the crypto space.
The tie-up with Swissquote is a few years old and made the bank become Switzerland’s first retail bank to offer a Bitcoin trading service in 2017.
This also resulted in the bank reporting a profit of $104 million in 2021 and looking at this the bank now wants to move ahead by building its own in-house independent crypto platform.
The decision by PostFinance to not only support bitcoin trading but also to create a separate platform for it comes during a general market correction that has seen Bitcoin shed more than 70% of its all-time high value, which was about $68,000.
PostFinance is not the first financial institution to enter the crypto space. Globally, other traditional institutions have already embraced Bitcoin. These include Julius Baer, LGT Bank, JP Morgan, Fidelity, Standard Chartered, Banks of Wells Fargo, Barclays, UBS, BNY Mellon, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Citi Bank, and BNP Paribas, and others.
The service will primarily be used for the trading and custody of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. However, it is said that the company is looking for more outside partners to expand its product lineup.
To offer their customers the most comprehensive financial services possible, many major financial institutions are now investing in cryptocurrencies. The reason for this is that they are aware of the benefits that digital or cryptocurrency offers.
