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 clients, according to a CNBC report.
The move marks another move by the Wall Street bank into the digital asset space. Biswarup Chatterjee, global head of service partnerships and innovation at Citi, said the custody solution has been in development for two to three years.
“We have various types of scans,” Chatterjee told CNBC. “We hope that in the coming quarters we will be able to come to market with a credible custody solution that we can offer to our asset managers and other clients.”
The custody plan would provide institutional clients with a regulated way to store cryptocurrencies, an infrastructure that many traditional investors consider essential for exposure to the sector.
Chatterjee said Citi is taking a hybrid approach, developing some escrow tools internally while also exploring external partnerships.
“We may have certain solutions that are completely designed and built in-house… while we may use a third-party, lightweight, agile solution for other types of assets,” he said. “We are currently not ruling anything out.”
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 cryptocurrency back office.
