Ticino bank joins the crypto club: BancaStato lets customers trade $BTC from its own app 🏦

BancaStato, the cantonal bank serving Switzerland's Italian-speaking Ticino region, has launched regulated cryptocurrency trading and custody through a partnership with digital asset bank Sygnum and banking software provider Avaloq, according to a Thursday announcement shared with Cointelegraph. Customers can now buy, sell and hold four crypto assets — Bitcoin ($BTC), Ether ($ETH), Litecoin ($LTC) and Solana ($SOL) — directly through BancaStato's existing web and mobile banking applications.

The integration connects Sygnum's application programming interface (API) to Avaloq's platform, allowing BancaStato's roughly 170,000 clients to access the new service without a separate order management system. Headquartered in Zurich, Avaloq develops the core and digital banking software used by banks; Sygnum supplies the trading and custody infrastructure. The setup reduces operational complexity and simplifies the rollout of additional features, the companies said.

Fritz Jost, Sygnum's chief B2B officer, said BancaStato is the first bank running on Avaloq's software-as-a-service environment to offer buy, hold and sell functionality for crypto assets through its e-banking channels using Sygnum's API. He called the launch a "significant step in the maturity and scalability of regulated digital asset infrastructure." BancaStato is one of more than 25 financial institutions now using Sygnum's B2B platform, whose other partners include Societe Generale-FORGE, PostFinance and VZ Depotbank.

In late June, Sygnum's Liechtenstein-based subsidiary, Sygnum Europe AG, received a crypto-asset service provider (CASP) license under the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation from Liechtenstein's Financial Market Authority (FMA). The approval came shortly before the end of the MiCA transitional period on July 1, enabling Sygnum Europe to provide regulated crypto asset services across the bloc. Jost said banks remain responsible for their own regulatory arrangements while Sygnum handles licensing, custody and trading, which "allows a bank to go from decision to live offering in months rather than years."