Germany’s Savings Banks Could Introduce Crypto Trading Next Year: Report
The network of around 400 savings banks across Germany will vote on whether to proceed with the project early in 2022.
Dec 13, 2021 at 4:43 p.m. UTC:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/O7OY3E6KQVAFBL7FDA2XBCS2BQ.jpg)
Germany’s savings banks are working together to potentially start offering crypto trading to customers directly from their accounts in 2022.
- The network of some 400 savings banks across Germany will vote on whether to proceed with the project early next year, German business publication Capital reported Monday.
- If approved, the banks would be able to offer trading of digital currencies such as bitcoin and ether to their customers direct from their checking accounts.
- A pilot for the project is being developed by payment IT services provider S-Payment, Capital said.
- The savings banks have about 50 million customers and manage about $1 trillion in assets. Even modest take-up could see sizable inflows of funds into the crypto market.
- The news represents the second potentially significant development to come from Germany this year following the approval of a law in July allowing “Spezialfonds” (special funds) to allocate up to 20% of their portfolios to crypto, which could equate $400 billion.
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Jamie Crawley is a CoinDesk news reporter based in London.
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