Germany’s one of the largest banking institutions confirmed its registration for a local crypto licence earlier this year, representing the first time a prime bank has moved toward cryptocurrencies in the country.
A representative from Commerzbank affirmed to Börsen-Zeitung on April 14 that it “applied for the crypto custody licence in the first quarter of 2022”. If accepted it will be able to provide exchange services as well as custody and protection of crypto-assets.
Commerzbank serves more than 18 million clients and more than 70,000 institutional clients, and the digital currency offering will apparently focus on its institutional client base.
From Jan.1 2020 any business that wants to offer crypto service in Germany should first take permission from the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, also known as BaFin.
Right now just four organisations have approval yet BaFin states it has more than 25 applications pending from firms wishing to operate crypto custody businesses.
Coinbase Germany was the first to be approved by the regulator in June 2021, and Upvest, a financial technology firm based in Berlin, was the most recently approved in March.
Commerzbank has seen participation in blockchain projects from 2018, and completed a portion of the primary transaction on a distributed ledger technology (DLT) security lending platform with other significant banks the next year.
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