An article not to be missed — what are the crypto-friendly banks out there?

Recently, the French banking giant Societe Generale’s crypto subsidiary SG Forge has won registration for cryptocurrency custody and trading services. Meanwhile, BNY Mellon, America’s oldest bank, has also launched crypto services. Seeing the unstoppable trend of crypto assets, many traditional and emerging banks began to speed up their moves to build crypto infrastructure and launch crypto asset services in the past years. This also means that crypto assets and services have been embraced by more people. Today, Truly will walk you through crypto-friendly banks in the market, and the services they offer. Let’s get started!

1. J.P.Morgan

J.P. Morgan, a respected investment bank and financial services firm, is among the “big four” banks in the U.S. As of 2022, it is the largest bank in the U.S., and the fifth-largest bank globally, with total assets of $3.954 trillion. In May 2022, J.P. Morgan started its cash management service, and decided to offer USD-based transaction services to Gemini and Coinbase users. In October 2020, the bank launched its second blockchain platform Onyx, expanding its presence from financial services to cryptocurrencies. It hasn’t stopped there — in June 2022, the head of Onyx Digital Assets announced that J.P. Morgan planned to bring trillions of dollars of tokenized assets to DeFi, which enables DeFi users to gain profits from non-crypto assets, a huge opportunity for the firm as well as the blockchain industry as a whole.

2. Silicon Valley Bank

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is an American commercial bank dedicated to offering solutions for innovators in and outside of Silicon Valley. Since its founding, the bank has funded over 30,000 start-ups, many of which have grown into “unicorns” worth over $1 billion. In 2014, Silicon Valley Bank inked a deal with Coinbase to provide banking services to the exchange. As this was considered risky back then, Coinbase also threw in stock warrants to make the deal more appealing. Apart from that, the stablecoin provider Circle is also a client of SVB.

3. Signature Bank

Signature Bank is the first FDIC-insured bank to launch a blockchain-based digital payments platform. Introduced in January 2019, Signet the platform is committed to providing fast and stable real-time crypto payment services. It is a payment ecosystem built on the blockchain and also the first platform approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Previously, the crypto exchange Bittrex established a formal agreement with Signature Bank to allow corporate clients in specific states to purchase virtual tokens using USD. The move is designed to increase the amount of institutional capital making its way through the crypto space.

On June 18, 2021, TrueUSD announced a partnership with Signature Bank, a New York-based full-service commercial bank. TUSD was then integrated into Signature Bank’s payment network Signet, which allows its users to enjoy 24/7 minting services that can be completed within 2 minutes on average, greatly improving its financial efficiency and user experience. Also, with Signet, TUSD is able to provide free-of-charge transaction services to cater to users’ needs. Signature Bank is dedicated to serving institutional customers. It will designate account managers to customers with a large transaction volume to help them online and on-site in a timely manner.

4. Customers Bank

Headquartered in West Reading, Pennsylvania, Customers Bank is a leading commercial bank focused on cryptocurrencies and has been providing a full range of financial services to a variety of businesses across the United States since its founding in 2009, with assets of $20.3 billion as of June 30, 2022. As a member of the Federal Reserve System, the Bank has its deposits covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Based on Tassat’s real-time payment platform, Customers Bank launched its own branded Customers Bank Instant Token, or CBIT™, in 2021, allowing blockchain-backed, real-time instant B2B payments between its clients.

5. Silvergate Bank

In January 2014, Silvergate became one of the first banks to set up accounts for cryptocurrency transactions. It is one of the few crypto-friendly banks and a leading provider of innovative financial services in the crypto space. As of today, the bank has provided services for 750 crypto exchanges. In 2017, it launched a dedicated trading network that allows investors to transfer funds between crypto exchanges globally on a 24/7 basis. Now, Silvergate is accelerating the growth of the crypto market and reshaping global commerce for digital currencies. Besides, it serves numerous crypto firms like Coinbase, Bitstamp, Genesis Trading, Polychain Capital, and Paxos.

More importantly, by leveraging the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN), TUSD provides users with efficient token minting services. Unlike traditional banks, TUSD puts a premium on users’ needs and offers 24/7 minting, redemption, and settlement services to boost the efficiency of using TUSD coins.

6. Fidor Bank

Fidor Bank is a pioneering German digital bank based in Munich and Berlin. It was established in 2009 with a focus on providing innovative technologies to power banking services.The ground-breaking digital bank has partnered with bitcoin.de, one of Europe’s largest crypto marketplaces, and digital currency exchange Kraken to integrate users’ crypto wallets into their Fidor accounts through API connection. Now, Fidor’s customers can trade cryptocurrencies more easily and efficiently.

7. Prime Trust

Prime Trust is an industry-leading trust company. As a chartered, regulated financial institution, it’s overseen by the banking commissioner’s office at the Nevada Financial Institutions Division. It is also a member of the American Bankers Association and Nevada Trust Company Association, as well as a crypto-friendly bank seasoned in the digital economy, trust business, securities regulations, and government affairs.

PrimeX allows TUSD holders to mint and redeem their tokens 24/7 and provides optimal instant settlement.

8. VersaBank

VersaBank is a North American banking leader in business-to-business (B2B) digital payment and technology solutions for cybersecurity. The bank has introduced its cryptocurrency vault service, VersaVault, to provide custodial services for crypto exchanges and funds holding cryptocurrency or blockchain-based assets. As explained by David Taylor, president and CEO of VersaBank and VersaVault, the digital safety box ensures “absolute” user privacy because VersaVault “does not have the ability to ‘drill’ into a client’s digital safety deposit box, nor does it have the ability to look inside.”

9. Cross River Bank

Cross River is an American financial services organization that merges the expertise of a bank with the innovation and product offering of a technology company. It services its clients with embedded payments, lending, and cryptocurrency solutions, and is an FDIC member. In the crypto market, the bank offers real-time payment and real-time settlement 24/7/365 through the RTP® network; it securely sends wires between parties over networks, including Fedwire, to make crypto payment easier and faster.

10. First Digital Trust

First Digital Trust was built in 2017, under the umbrella of First Digital Trust Limited. It has brought together skills from the traditional financial world and knowledge of the digital assets economy to offer open finance solutions. Since the spin-off in 2019, First Digital Trust has become a fully independent public trust company headquartered in Hong Kong, offering a driving force to the digital assets industry.

Users can mint and redeem their tokens through First Digital Trust, TUSD’s trust partner. Mints and redemptions in small amounts are supported. So, for those whose minting and redemption usually involve a relatively small amount of money, First Digital Trust is your go-to choice. Please note that the upper limit amount of a single minting or redemption is $400K.

In addition to the banks listed above that have rolled out crypto financial services and digital currency solutions, crypto payment processors such as Simples, TrustPay and Ziglu also offer users crypto payment services. It is worth mentioning that Simplex has integrated TrueUSD (TUSD), which allows users to use a debit card or a credit card to purchase the stablecoin via Simplex.

After you read the introductions above, we believe that you have gained insight into crypto-friendly banks, and such knowledge may help you manage your crypto portfolio smartly. If you think we missed out any other crypto-friendly banks in this article, please leave us a comment!

Last but not least

The growing popularity of cryptocurrency in recent years brings to the world an expanding crypto user base. The majority of financial banks have seized new opportunities in the crypto market, seeking to attract users by introducing crypto-related financial services, and crypto-friendly banks are therefore springing up across the world, particularly in Europe. Such banks are bound to have a larger market as cryptocurrency becomes embraced by a wider public and more innovative crypto projects appear in the segments of margin and derivatives trading, the NFT, and DeFi yield farming.

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