Banca Sella said it became the first Italian lender to secure a crypto services license from the Bank of Italy under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.
The private bank, which has 50 billion euros ($54 billion) in assets under management and more than 3.1 million customers, said it completed a formal 40-day notification process that freed it to roll out crypto services to customers later this year.
“Being approved as a crypto-asset provider will enable Banca Sella to launch in 2026 a solution dedicated to the storage, transfer and receipt of digital assets aimed at selected categories of customers,” the bank said in a statement on its website.
While the bank’s initial retail crypto plans were routed through its mobile banking business, Hype. This new enterprise-oriented infrastructure relies on a compliance partnership with blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis and an internal digital asset pilot originally built with Fireblocks.
Sella joins the roughly 20 major European banks offering crypto-asset 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 aiming to issue a euro-denominated stablecoin this year.
Sella said it is involved in EU tokenization of deposit and payment 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, the bank’s managing director of digital banking.
