Citi Eyes 2026 Crypto Custody Launch After Years of Quiet Development: CNBC

Citi (C) plans to offer crypto custody services in 2026, enabling the bank to hold native digital assets like bitcoin and ether on behalf of clients, according to a report by CNBC.

The move marks another step by the Wall Street bank into the digital asset space. Biswarup Chatterjee, Citi’s global head of partnerships and innovation for services, said the custody solution has been in development for two to three years.

“We have various kinds of explorations,” Chatterjee told CNBC. “We’re hoping that in the next few quarters, we can come to market with 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 crypto, a piece of infrastructure many traditional investors view as essential for exposure to the sector.

Chatterjee said Citi is pursuing a hybrid approach, developing some custody tools internally while also exploring outside partnerships.

“We may have certain solutions that are completely designed and built in-house … whereas we may use a third-party, lightweight, nimble solution for other kinds of assets,” he said. “We’re not currently ruling out anything.”

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 is also exploring a stablecoin issuance, though she noted that tokenized deposits are a more immediate focus.

Last week, Citi Ventures invested in BVNK, a stablecoin payments startup, alongside Visa. That deal followed earlier 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.