Five years after it first floated the idea, Germany's largest lender is now holding Bitcoin for clients.

Deutsche Bank said Wednesday that its Digital Asset Custody service has gone live for paying customers, giving institutional and corporate clients across Europe a regulated way to store and transfer Bitcoin, Ethereum, and three stablecoins: Circle's USDC and EURC, plus EURAU. USDC is pegged to the U.S. dollar, while EURC and EURAU are denominated in euros. The bank manages wallets and private keys on clients' behalf — and with good reason, since whoever controls a private key controls the underlying asset, making key safekeeping the core of any custody service.

For now, the service covers custody and transfers, with tokenized financial instruments on its roadmap. It is aimed at clients of Deutsche Bank's corporate and investment banking units, including corporations, asset managers, hedge funds, custodians, brokers, and sovereign institutions, according to the bank's September announcement of the plan.

The setup includes hardware-based key protection, multi-person approvals, and separate warm and cold storage, the bank said.

"In the medium term we aim to deliver a fully integrated, regulated ecosystem that supports the custody, tokenisation, and settlement of digital assets," said Paul Maley, Deutsche Bank's global head of trust and securities services.

Deutsche Bank separately signed a memorandum of understanding with Deutsche Asset Management, the majority-owned money manager formerly known as DWS, to explore working together on tokenized money market funds, crypto exchange-traded commodities (ETCs), and stablecoins. The asset manager oversaw about 1.22 trillion euros as of Sept. 30.

The bank has also said it plans to expand the custody service to Asia. Together with the tokenization roadmap and the Deutsche Asset Management collaboration, the planned Asian rollout marks out the milestones to watch as the bank's digital-asset platform matures.

The launch caps a long road that stretches back to at least 2021, when Deutsche Bank began readying a crypto custody and trading platform. In 2023, the bank applied for a digital asset custody license in Germany. Last year, reports said the bank planned to build the service with technology from crypto exchange Bitpanda, alongside its longtime partner Taurus.

Deutsche Bank received authorization from BaFin, Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, under the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, or MiCA, which requires crypto service providers to be licensed. MiCA took full effect across the bloc in December 2024, and authorization in one member state allows a firm to offer its licensed services across the entire EU — putting digital-asset servicing under formal supervisory oversight throughout the union.

The bank cautioned that its custody service does not protect clients against swings in the value of digital assets, fraud, or failures by other market participants.

The custody launch isn't Deutsche Bank's only crypto bet. The bank is among a group of global lenders, including Goldman Sachs and Citi, backing a $270 million challenge to crypto's dominant stablecoin issuers. Taken together, they show a bank assembling digital-asset capabilities across custody, tokenization, and stablecoins rather than stopping at a single product.