CITI (C) plans to offer crypto parenting services in 2026, enabling the bank to have native digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ether on behalf of clients, according to a CNBC report.
The move marks another step from Wall Street Bank into the digital asset space. Biswarup Chatterjee, CITI’s global leader of partnerships and innovation for services, said custody has been under development for two to three years.
“We have different kinds of explorations,” Chatterjee told CNBC. “We hope that in the next few quarters we can come on the market with a credible custody, which we can offer our asset leaders and other clients.”
The detention plan would give institutional clients a regulated way of storing crypto, a piece of infrastructure that many traditional investors consider essential for exposure to the sector.
Chatterjee said Citi is pursuing a hybrid approach and developing some custody internally while exploring outside partnerships.
“We may have certain solutions that are completely designed and built internally … Whereas we may be using a third party, easy, quick solution for other types of assets,” he said. “We are currently not excluding anything.”
The detention offer would participate in a growing portfolio of digital asset experiments at CITI. Under the bank’s revenue call in 2nd quarter in July, CEO Jane Fraser also said that Citi is also exploring a stableecoin issue, though she noticed that tokenized deposits are a more immediate focus.
Last week, Citi Ventures invested in BVNK, a stableecoin payment start with Visa. This agreement followed previous experiments in blockchain-based trade financing and cross-border payments.
If launched, CITI’s custody would place the bank among a small but growing group of traditional financial institutions coming into the crypto -back office.
