The second largest bank in Spain, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) will soon allow customers to buy, sell and manage Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions via its application.
The service will initially be deployed to “a small group of users” and gradually extended to all private customers of the bank in Spain in the coming months.
This decision follows BBVA satisfying all the requirements of the EU markets in the regulation of the crypto-sets (Mica) and fulfill the necessary formalities with the Spanish Commission for securities and exchanges (CNMV).
The bank has not mentioned when it plans to deploy the service for customers other than those who have registered with private banking services, which means that new features are only relevant for those who can prove that they meet the wealth requirements of the bank, at least in the short term.
BBVA offers similar services in Switzerland since 2021, but once again only to private banking customers of the group and in Turkey (through its guaranteed subsidiary BBVA Kripto) since January 2025.
Banks and crypto
With the exception of Revolut, which offered a retail crypto exchange on many markets Until 2017It is always quite unusual to see a general public bank offering an exchange of crypto for non -institutional customers. BBVA is among The largest European banks by assets.
Some banks already offer a mixture of cryptographic trading and traditional banking services, such as Switzerland Dukascopy BankBut many, as Amina in SwitzerlandMark him explicitly as “cryptographic banks”.
But even if they do not directly offer crypto trade to their customers, more established historical European banks offer Crypto services Introduction of Mica provided more regulatory clarity.
Last month, the standard of the chartered multinational bank announced a new entity Based in Luxembourg, offering childcare and digital security services in the European Union.
Meanwhile, other recognizable European banks make significant Bitcoin purchases to add to their corporate treasury bills. In January, the largest bank in Italy, InteSa Sanpaolo, bought 11 BTC worth 1 million euros ($ 1 million), Become the first Italian bank To make a direct investment in cryptocurrency.
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