Citi to Debut Bitcoin Custody Service for Institutional Investors This Year
Key Takeaways
- •Citi plans to introduce its bitcoin custody service later this year under the Custody+ brand.
- •The product is intended to let institutional investors custody bitcoin and traditional assets within a single framework.
- •Citi says the service will provide near-instant visibility and execution across servicing, settlement, FX, cash and data.
- •The bank’s digital asset push comes alongside its blockchain initiatives, including Citi Token Services and work on a potential stablecoin product with other large banks.
- •Citi has not provided a specific launch date beyond saying the custody service will go live later this year.
Citi will debut a bitcoin custody service later this year, becoming the latest major American bank to push deeper into the digital asset space following friendlier legislation and a pro-crypto approach from U.S. regulators.
The bank said Tuesday that its Custody+ product will let institutional investors custody both traditional assets and bitcoin within a single framework, rather than requiring separate systems. Citi first announced plans to debut a digital asset custody service last year, saying at the time that it had been developing the offering for several years. The company detailed the launch in a Tuesday announcement.
JUST IN: $2.8 trillion bank Citi announces they will go live with Bitcoin custody services later this year pic.twitter.com/hfIZIJIh7o
"Custody+ is a clear example of this investment as we build infrastructure to eliminate latency and drag for institutional investor clients," Chris Cox, Head of Investor Services at Citi, said in a statement.
According to Citi, the service will let clients process every asset servicing transaction through a "single seamless flow." Clients will get continuous, near-instant visibility and execution across servicing, settlement, FX, cash, and data — plus the flexibility to plug in digital assets or build their own offerings on top of Citi's rails — instead of being locked into a single standardized custody workflow.
Custody has long been a gating factor for institutional crypto exposure, since asset managers typically require qualified, regulated custodians rather than self-custody. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in January 2024 widened regulated access to bitcoin, though crypto-native firms such as Coinbase Custody hold the assets for most of those funds. Citi is following other U.S. trust banks into the field: BNY Mellon began offering digital asset custody to select clients in 2022, and State Street has been expanding its own digital asset servicing.
The new custody service runs parallel to Citi's broader blockchain offerings, including Citi Token Services, which enables real-time cross-border payments using tokenized deposits. Since last year, the firm has also been working with other top banks — including Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America — to explore issuing a stablecoin product.
Speaking about the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act last week, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser said that the bank was a "leader in digital assets." She added that while the legislation needed some improvements, the bank wanted a "good bill to go through."
The Clarity Act, which aims to define which tokens qualify as securities versus commodities, is the latest pro-crypto legislation. Lawmakers will vote on the bill in September. Citi has not named a specific go-live date for the custody service beyond "later this year."
This article was first published by Bitcoin Magazine and written by Mathew Di Salvo.