Deutsche Bank said on Wednesday that its digital asset custody service had gone live for paying clients, Reuters reported from Frankfurt, noting that European banks are showing increasing openness to digital markets.
The service supports BTC, ETH and USDC as well as euro stablecoins such as EURC and EURAU, U.Today reported, and for now is available in the EU, operating out of DB AG Frankfurt. The bank also said it had entered into a memorandum of understanding with Deutsche Asset Management, the money manager it mostly owns and that until recently was known as DWS.
FROM PLAN TO LAUNCH
Germany's largest lender initially announced in September that it planned a custody service for institutional and corporate clients in Europe, pending regulatory approvals. The bank's earlier release said go-live with first clients would come this year, subject to the completion of the applicable regulatory timeline.
In that September announcement, the bank said the initial target group comprises clients of its Corporate Bank and Investment Bank, including corporates, asset managers, hedge funds, custodians, brokers and sovereign institutions. It said Deutsche Bank would manage the wallets and private keys on clients' behalf, which would reduce the need for clients to build and maintain their own custody infrastructure.
The bank's release described digital assets as "not a replacement for the traditional financial system but an important complement to it". It said the range of supported assets may be expanded over time, subject to client demand and the bank's product-approval, risk management and regulatory processes, and that tokenised financial instruments are included in the roadmap.
SECURITY AND THE ASSET MANAGEMENT LINK
The bank listed measures including secure key generation and hardware-based protection, segregation of duties, multi-person approval processes and separate warm and cold storage environments. According to U.Today, access goes through Autobahn, the bank's own multi-channel gateway, and the service will initially focus on custody of digital assets and transfers, with further capabilities planned.
"In the medium term we aim to deliver a fully integrated, regulated ecosystem that supports the custody, tokenisation, and settlement of digital assets," said Paul Maley, global head of trust and securities services at Deutsche Bank. The memorandum of understanding with Deutsche Asset Management is "to explore comprehensive commercial and technical collaboration opportunities in the digital asset space".
EURAU, one of the supported stablecoins, is issued by AllUnity, a joint venture that includes DWS, now Deutsche Asset Management, according to U.Today. Deutsche Bank has previously told Reuters it wanted to expand the offering to Asia.
THE TGB VIEW
Deutsche Bank ranks 8th in TGB's Europe ranking, the Largest banks in Europe 2026, with a return on equity of 8.8% for the year to December 2025. Germany's banking market is fragmented and organised in three pillars, and the five largest credit institutions held 35.4% of sector assets in 2025, against 51.2% in Italy and 67.4% in Spain, according to ECB structural indicators. The next step to watch is Asia, where U.Today reported an expansion is planned for 2027, though the details are yet to be confirmed.
Related: UBS weighs Deutsche Bank's Sewing as possible successor to Ermotti, rumours say
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