Citi (C) plans to offer cryptocurrency custody services in 2026, allowing the bank to hold native digital assets like bitcoin and ether on behalf of its clients, according to a CNBC report.
This decision marks a new step for the Wall Street bank in the field of digital assets. Biswarup Chatterjee, global head of partnerships and innovation for services at Citi, said the custody solution has been in development for two to three years.
“We do different types of explorations,” Chatterjee told CNBC. “We hope that in the coming quarters we will be able to commercialize a credible custody solution that we can offer to our asset managers and other clients.”
The custody plan would give institutional clients a regulated way to store cryptocurrencies, a piece of infrastructure that many traditional investors view as essential to gaining exposure to the sector.
Chatterjee said Citi is pursuing a hybrid approach, developing some custody tools internally while also exploring external partnerships.
“We may have some solutions completely designed and built in-house… whereas we may use a third-party, lightweight, agile solution for other types of assets,” he said. “We’re not ruling anything out at this point.”
The custody offering would join a growing portfolio of digital asset experiments at Citi. During the bank’s second-quarter earnings call in July, CEO Jane Fraser said Citi was also exploring a stablecoin issuance, although she noted that tokenized deposits were a more immediate priority.
Last week, Citi Ventures invested in BVNK, a stablecoin payments startup, alongside Visa. This agreement followed previous experiments in blockchain-based trade finance and cross-border payments.
If launched, Citi’s custody service would place the bank among a small but growing group of traditional financial institutions entering the crypto back office.
