Not long ago, most banks treated crypto the way you’d treat something radioactive.
Don’t touch it, don’t bank it, keep clients away from it if you can.
That’s not really where things stand anymore. Some of the world’s biggest, oldest financial institutions are now holding it, moving it, and building entire product lines around it, not experimenting on the side.
Let’s take a look at what banks are actually doing with crypto right now, and what that shift says about where things are heading.
Which Banks Offer Crypto Custody
Crypto custody used to be something only crypto-native firms handled, but now a growing number of licensed banks offer it directly.
Switzerland led the way. In 2019, Sygnum and AMINA Bank (formerly SEBA Bank) became the first two banks in the world with a full banking license built specifically for digital assets. Sygnum alone now holds around $5 billion in client assets across more than 2,000 clients worldwide, custody kept off-balance-sheet and fully segregated, so funds legally belong to the client even if the bank runs into trouble.
Bigger, older names followed. BNY, the world’s largest custodian bank with close to $60 trillion in assets under custody, has offered live crypto custody since 2022 and now custodies assets for crypto ETFs, including Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin ETF. State Street Corporation has moved into crypto custody for institutional clients too.
What stands out isn’t that these banks added crypto. It’s that custody, the most trust-sensitive part of banking, is where some of the most conservative institutions chose to start.
How Banks Are Using Crypto for Payments
Custody is one thing, banks holding crypto on behalf of someone else. Building your own blockchain-based payment system is a different move entirely, and JPMorgan is the clearest example of a bank doing exactly that.
Back in 2019, JPMorgan launched a private blockchain platform originally called Onyx, built around JPM Coin, a digital token institutional clients could use to send and settle payments instantly within the bank’s own network. The platform’s since been rebranded to Kinexys, and JPM Coin has evolved along with it, moving from a closed, permissioned system to actually issuing on Base, a public Ethereum-based blockchain, making it one of the first bank-issued deposit tokens to operate that way. It’s not a stablecoin in the traditional sense, it’s a direct digital claim on an existing JPMorgan bank deposit, carrying the same backing as any other funds held at the bank.
JPMorgan’s blockchain platform has processed more than $1.5 trillion since launch, with daily volume now running somewhere around $2 billion, used by clients like Siemens and FedEx across more than 30 countries. This year, JPMorgan also filed to launch a tokenized money market fund built to satisfy the reserve requirements of the GENIUS Act, positioning it as a compliant option for stablecoin issuers needing somewhere to hold reserves.
For modern banks and neobanks (digital-first banks), this opens more than one path into crypto. Some may start with custody or crypto deposits, others may add tokenized assets, such as tokenized shares or money market funds. Many can also benefit from multi-chain asset tracking, where users can view fiat and crypto balances, or manage digital assets across different blockchain networks, from one interface.
The point is not that every bank needs to become a crypto exchange. It is that crypto infrastructure now gives financial institutions more ways to hold, move, track, and offer digital assets inside products customers already use.
Do Banks Let You Trade or Invest in Crypto
For a long time, Goldman Sachs, an investment banking company, was openly skeptical of crypto, its research teams called Bitcoin a speculative asset with no real use as money. That position started shifting after 2020, as institutional client demand picked up. Goldman relaunched its crypto trading desk, expanded into derivatives, and began offering crypto exposure to wealth and institutional clients through its Digital Assets business. That shift has kept building.
In October 2025, Goldman Sachs and Singapore’s DBS Bank completed the first crypto options trade directly between two banks. The deal, linked to Bitcoin and Ether and settled in cash, gave financial institutions a new way to manage the risks of offering crypto-related products.
This is a meaningfully different use case than custody or payments infrastructure. It’s banks meeting demand that was already there, wealth and institutional clients who wanted crypto exposure through an institution they already trusted, rather than opening an account somewhere new.
What This Means for Crypto Businesses
Custody, payments, trading, some of the most conservative financial institutions in the world are now doing all three as a real, live part of how they operate. That’s a meaningful shift for the crypto economy. Legitimate, regulated banking infrastructure around crypto exists now in a way it simply didn’t a few years ago.
The businesses building crypto products today aren’t starting from zero anymore. The rails, the custody models, the trust signals, banks have already spent real time and money proving a lot of this out. The opportunity is knowing which of it to build on. While you’re here, check out how to integrate a payment gateway to your crypto product.
At Evercode Lab, this is exactly where we come in. From our Custody Platform to white label wallets and exchanges, we help businesses build on infrastructure that’s already been tested, so you’re not reinventing what banks and institutions have already figured out. If you’re thinking through what that could look like for your product, we’re happy to talk it through.
FAQ
What banks are crypto friendly?
Some banks, like Sygnum and AMINA in Switzerland, are built specifically around crypto custody and trading. Others, like BNY and Goldman Sachs, are traditional institutions that added crypto services for existing institutional and wealth clients.
Which banks allow crypto purchases?
Most traditional banks still don’t let you buy crypto directly through a standard account, that’s typically handled through an exchange instead. What’s changed is that some banks now offer crypto custody, trading, or investment products through separate, often institutional or wealth-focused, services rather than a basic checking account.
What banks accept crypto?
Banks like BNY now custody crypto assets on behalf of institutional clients, and JPMorgan’s Kinexys platform moves value using its own blockchain-based deposit token. That’s different from a bank simply letting a retail customer deposit crypto like cash.
Are crypto-friendly banks safe to use?
Banks offering regulated crypto services, licensed custody, verified reserves, clear regulatory oversight, tend to carry the same trust signals as traditional banking. The safety comes from the regulation and structure behind the service.
How do neobanks differ from traditional banks?
Neobanks are usually digital-first banks built around online and mobile services, while traditional banks often combine digital products with established branch networks. The difference is mostly in the operating model, customer experience, and how each institution delivers financial services.
Do banks support multichain crypto?
Most banks usually start with selected assets, custody, or specific blockchain products. With tools like White Label Evercode Lab’s asset management app, banks and fintechs can integrate multichain asset support, manage balances and transactions across networks, and expand crypto features without building everything from scratch.