Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank will allow retail customers to trade crypto by the end of January 2024. The new functionality will work similarly to traditional bank transfers.
Raiffeisenlandesbank Niederösterreich-Wien AG (RLB NÖ-Wien), an arm of Raiffeisen Bank, will launch a digital investment platform for cryptocurrency trading in early 2024. This was reported in several specialized media citing high-ranking employees of the bank. The technical partner of the project is the cryptocurrency exchange Bitpanda, which has agreed to cooperate with Raiffeisen Bank in early 2023.
Crypto transactions will be available primarily to Raiffeisen Bank customers from Vienna, where the bank is headquartered. The cryptocurrency services will be accessed via the bank’s mobile app. The user interface will be as familiar as possible and all transactions will be secure.
The service is aimed primarily at retail customers interested in investing small amounts in digital assets. This is a key difference between Raiffeisen Bank’s services and crypto offerings of other banks, which focus on meeting the needs of institutional clients. For example, DZ Bank, one of Germany’s largest financial conglomerates, launched a blockchain platform for institutional clients in early November that allows trading in tokenized securities and other digital assets.
