South Africa's FNB adds crypto trading for bank customers

A South African high-street bank now sells crypto alongside shares. First National Bank (FNB) launched a service called Crypto Investing on October 6, ITWeb and IT-Online reported.

Customers can buy and sell five assets: bitcoin, ether, XRP, solana and USDT, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. Trades start at 10 rand and can be made at any hour, any day. The service sits inside the bank's existing share-trading products, Share Saver, Share Builder, Share Investor and Share Zero.

FNB built it with VALR, a crypto exchange, ITWeb reported. There is a limit worth knowing about. Holdings are ring-fenced inside the bank's system, so customers cannot send coins they already own to FNB or withdraw coins to their own wallets. They get price exposure, not custody.

Bheki Mkhize, chief executive of FNB Wealth and Asset Management, said the bank had seen strong client interest in crypto and that clients wanted a trusted platform. Crypto Briefing put the number of clients who can use the service at nearly 9 million.

It is another case of a mainstream bank offering crypto as one more product in an existing app. For customers, the trade-off is convenience against control: easy access inside a bank they already use, but no ability to hold the coins themselves.