Sparkassen Said "Crypto, Ja Bitte" — Germans Can Now Buy $BTC, $ETH, $XRP, $SOL and $POL at the Bank

Germany's Sparkassen savings bank network activated cryptocurrency trading on Monday, allowing customers to buy Bitcoin ($BTC), Ethereum ($ETH), XRP ($XRP), Solana ($SOL) and Polygon ($POL) directly through its banking app. The service, named "Krypto – powered by Deka," is operated by DekaBank and is being introduced across more than 230 Sparkassen banks, with wider availability expected through the first half of 2027.

Customers can access the feature inside the existing Sparkasse app's investment section without opening a separate securities account. Each transaction carries a €0.99 fee, with additional costs arising from the spread between buying and selling prices. The supported assets appear alongside traditional monetary products and services within the same application interface.

DekaBank serves as custodian, holding the cryptocurrencies on its own wallet infrastructure and routing orders through trading arrangements with Börse Stuttgart. A restriction applies on transfers: customers cannot move their holdings directly into personal hardware wallets. The rollout follows a parallel initiative in which DZ Bank is supporting a separate cryptocurrency offering among Germany's cooperative banks.

German banks have stepped up efforts to bring cryptocurrency trading to existing customer accounts, and Sparkassen's launch marks the largest deployment to date within the country's public-sector savings bank system. The offering is limited to five tokens at launch and is being rolled out gradually among participating Sparkassen institutions.