Germany — a country where people rent housing more often than they buy, and credit cards have taken root with great difficulty — is opening the cryptocurrency market for tens of millions of retail customers. The country's two largest banking groups are launching digital asset trading directly in familiar banking applications.

DZ Bank, central institute of cooperative banks, has already launched the meinKrypto platform in the VR Banking application — with a BaFin license according to MiCA standards, obtained at the end of 2025. Customers have access to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Cardano. Börse Stuttgart Digital provides asset storage under German supervision. There are about 650 cooperative banks in the country, and more than 71% of them have already expressed interest in connecting the service.

At the same time, DekaBank is preparing its own platform for approximately 340 savings banks — the launch is planned for the end of 2026 with a phased connection. The Sparkassen group's savings banks serve about 50 million customers — a population comparable to South Korea. Together with the cooperative banks, both networks cover about 80 million customer relationships with a country's population of 84 million people.

The turnaround is indicative: just four years ago, German savings banks rejected the idea of crypto trading for retail customers, citing «unpredictable risks». Now the motivation has changed: banks do not want to lose young and technically savvy customers in favor of specialized platforms. The key advantage remains trust — a Börse Stuttgart Digital survey showed that 38% of Germans trust crypto operations through their bank, while only 19% trust specialized platforms.

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#banks
#Bitcoin
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#DZBank
#DekaBank
#MiCA
#cryptomarket
#Brick