Spain’s second-largest financial institution, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) will quickly allow clients to purchase, promote and handle Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions by way of its app.
The service will initially be rolled out to “a small group of customers” and step by step prolonged to all of the financial institution’s non-public clients in Spain over the approaching months.
The transfer follows BBVA satisfying all the necessities of the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Belongings Regulation (MiCA) and finishing the required formalities with the Spanish Securities and Trade Fee (CNMV).
The financial institution didn’t point out when it plans to roll out the service for patrons aside from those that signed up for personal banking, which means the brand new options are solely related for many who can show they meet the financial institution’s wealth necessities, no less than within the brief time period.
BBVA has provided related providers in Switzerland since 2021, however once more solely to the group’s non-public banking clients, and in Turkey (by its Garanti BBVA Kripto subsidiary) since January 2025.
Banks and crypto
Aside from Revolut, which has been providing crypto buying and selling to retail shoppers in lots of markets way back to 2017, it’s nonetheless pretty uncommon to see a mainstream financial institution provide crypto buying and selling for non-institutional shoppers. BBVA is among the many largest European banks by belongings.
Some banks already provide a mixture of crypto buying and selling and conventional banking providers, akin to Switzerland’s Dukascopy Financial institution, however many, like Switzerland’s AMINA, model themselves explicitly as “crypto banks.”
However even when they’re not providing crypto buying and selling to their shoppers straight, extra established historic European banks are providing crypto providers now that the introduction of MiCA has supplied extra regulatory readability.
Final month, multinational financial institution Normal Chartered introduced a brand new entity primarily based in Luxembourg, providing crypto and digital asset custody providers within the European Union.
In the meantime, different recognizable European banks are making vital Bitcoin purchases so as to add to their company treasuries. In January, Italy’s largest financial institution, Intesa Sanpaolo, bought 11 BTC value €1 million euros ($1 million), changing into the primary Italian financial institution to make a direct funding within the cryptocurrency.
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