Banca Sella said it became the first Italian lender to obtain a crypto services license from the Bank of Italy under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation.
The private bank, which has €50 billion ($54 billion) in assets under management and more than 3.1 million clients, said it completed a 40-day formal notification process, authorizing it to roll out crypto services to its clients later this year.
“The approval as a cryptoasset service provider will allow Banca Sella to launch in 2026 a solution dedicated to the custody, transfer and receipt of digital assets aimed at selected categories of clients,” the bank said in a statement on its website.
While the bank’s initial retail crypto plans were channeled through its mobile banking company, Hype. This new corporate infrastructure is based on a compliance partnership with blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis and an internal digital asset pilot initially built alongside Fireblocks.
Sella joins around 20 major European banks offering cryptoasset services under MiCA, including Germany’s Commerzbank and LBBW, France’s Société Générale FORGE, and Spain’s BBVA.
The bank is among the founders of Qivalis, a group of 37 European banks that aim to issue a euro-denominated stablecoin this year.
Sella said he is involved in EU deposit and payment tokenization projects, such as the Pontes and Appia projects, which aim to strengthen the bloc’s financial autonomy.
“The evolution of payments towards instant, interoperable and programmable models – also driven by the tokenization of currencies and assets – is redefining financial infrastructures at a European and global level,” said Andrea Tessera, general director of digital banking at the bank.
