Major French banking group BPCE is expected to begin offering cryptocurrency trading services to retail customers from Monday via its Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Épargne applications.
Customers of four regional banks, including Banque Populaire Île-de-France and Caisse d’Épargne Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, will be able to buy and sell bitcoin ether Solana and USDC directly through their banking apps, reports The Big Whale.
The deployment will affect around 2 million customers in the pilot phase, with BPCE planning to extend access to all of its 12 million commercial customers until 2026.
The service operates through a separate digital asset account managed by Hexarq, the crypto subsidiary of BPCE. Each account comes with a monthly fee of 2.99 euros ($3.48) and a 1.5% transaction fee, with a minimum fee of one euro per transaction.
A BPCE representative said the soft launch is designed to monitor adoption and performance of the system before scaling.
Other European banks have already taken similar measures. BBVA allows crypto trading directly in its Spanish banking app, while Santander’s Openbank offers access to five crypto assets with built-in custody. Additionally, a Vienna-based unit of Raiffeisen Bank has partnered with Bitpanda to offer cryptocurrencies to its customers.
