A major French bank’s jumping into crypto in a big way. BPCE’s rolling out crypto trading services through its Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Épargne apps starting Monday. They’re planning to eventually reach 12 million customers by 2026.
The service lets customers buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and USDC through a separate digital asset account that’s managed by Hexarq, which is BPCE’s crypto subsidiary. Right now the initial rollout covers four regional banks and will hit around 2 million customers.
There’s a monthly fee of €2.99 for the digital asset account plus a 1.5% commission on each transaction with a €1 minimum per trade. Users won’t need external exchanges or third-party wallets though, everything’s built right into the banking app.
BPCE’s taking a careful phased approach to see how things go before expanding to all 25 of their regional entities. A bank insider told The Big Whale they want to monitor adoption rates and system performance with a limited group first.
This move’s happening because European banks are feeling the heat from crypto-friendly fintechs like Revolut, Deblock, and Trade Republic that already offer digital assets. BBVA and Santander’s Openbank have also added crypto recently. BPCE’s one of the first major traditional European banks putting crypto directly into consumer banking apps.
Conclusion
BPCE’s crypto integration reflects mainstream European banking’s accelerating embrace of digital assets as competition from fintech challengers forces traditional institutions to adapt or risk losing younger digitally-native customers to more innovative platforms.
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