The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) share price is up as the bank plans to offer crypto in its CommBank app.
CBA’s plans for crypto
The big four ASX bank has announced that it’s planning to become Australia’s first bank to offer customers the ability to buy, sell and hold crypto assets in the CommBank app.
CBA isn’t doing this by itself. It is linking up with one of the world’s largest regulated crypto exchanges and custodians, Gemini, and leading blockchain analysis firm, Chainalysis.
The bank said that these partnerships have allowed it to design a crypto exchange and custody service that will be offered through a new feature in the app.
CBA has decided to do this because “a large number of its customers want to access crypto assets as an investment class and are already buying, selling and holding crypto assets through a variety of crypto exchanges.”
When is this happening?
The pilot will start in the “coming weeks” CBA plans to progressively release more features to more customers in 2022. CBA will provide customers with access to up to ten selected crypto assets including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.
CBA management thoughts on crypto
CBA CEO Matt Comyn said: “The emergence and growing demand for digital currencies from customers creates both challenges and opportunities for the financial services sector, which has seen a significant number of new players and business models innovating in this area.
“We believe we can play an important role in crypto to address what’s clearly a growing customer need and provide capability, security and confidence in a crypto trading platform.”
“We remain committed to reimagining banking and will continue to bring more functionality into the CommBank app including investing and shopping.”
Thoughts on this move by CBA
This is a fascinating move by Australia’s biggest bank. CBA does have a reputation for doing technological things first, before its competitors, but this is a bold move.
In some ways, cryptocurrency is a disruptor to banks, so it’s interesting to see CBA getting so involved in crypto by embedding it in its app.
I’m not sure how much of an impact this will have for CBA, but I certainly think it makes it more relevant to customers. It will be interesting to see what happens next and what the other banks of National Australia Bank Ltd (ASX: NAB), Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ASX: ANZ) and Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC) do.
