Commerzbank, one of the largest financial institutions in Germany has moved to obtain a local cryptocurrency licence, making it one of the top banks to look in the direction of digital currencies.
The financial giant applied for the licence to conduct crypto services at the beginning of the year, the bank’s spokesperson confirmed to local media outlet, Börsen-Zeitung on April 14.
Since January 2020, businesses that sought to offer crypto-related services were mandated to gain authorization from the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin).
Only four companies, with Coinbase being the first, are authorised to offer crypto services, even though BaFin still has roughly 25 pending applications.
While Commerzbank has over 18 million users and 70,000 institutional clients (who are major targets of the crypto offering), the bank has had links with blockchain since 2018.
In 2019, Commerz and other banks carried out some transactions on a distributed ledger technology security lending platform.
In August 2021, the bank teamed up with some protocols to develop blockchain-based digital marketplaces for existing assets such as art and real estate.
