Custodian NYDIG says that hundreds of US banks are ready to offer the direct purchase of bitcoin to their customers.
This is reported by CBNC, citing NYDIG sources according to which customers of some US banks will soon be able to buy, hold and sell bitcoin through their existing accounts. This would avoid sending money to and from exchanges.
NYDIG is a subsidiary of Stone Ridge, a $10bn asset manager based in New York, and is working with fintech giant Fidelity National Information Services specifically to enable banks to offer bitcoin through this method as early as the next few months.
NYDIG’s head of banking solutions, Patrick Sells, revealed that hundreds of banks have already signed up for the programme, although they are usually small institutions, such as Californian bank Suncrest, which has only seven branches. But the company is also said to be in talks with some of the largest banks in the US.
Bitcoin, US banks trail PayPal
Sells revealed that the goal is to make it easy for Americans to buy bitcoin with their existing bank accounts, and in particular with their bank’s mobile app, similar to how they already do with PayPal.
The curious thing is that until now the banks have always kept their distance from this market, which has proven to be profitable, as PayPal itself has declared in recent weeks.
It is probably precisely this success that has made the banks interested, given that it is a potential business that is relatively simple to set up, and which has a strong appeal for customers.
In fact, according to the President of NYDIG, Yan Zhao, the traditional banks are continually seeing deposits towards Coinbase, Galaxy, Kraken and the like, and this has made them understand that the market demand is there, and it is ample.
In addition, the banks will now be able to charge their customers a commission on the exchanges, and keep most of the revenue for themselves. Given that a survey commissioned by NYDIG itself revealed that many people would buy bitcoin if they could do so through their existing bank accounts, this is potentially a significant business.
According to Fidelity National Information’s head of digital banking, Rob Lee, with hundreds of smaller banks joining, eventually even giants like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America may decide to open up to provide these services.
Fidelity National Information is a supplier to several banks with a total of almost 300 million current accounts, so the potential of this project is very significant.
