A single crypto provider for eleven countries. Raiffeisen Bank International has selected Bitpanda to equip banks in its Central and Eastern European network with digital asset buying, selling and custody services. Deployment will be done market by market.
The agreement places Raiffeisen alongside Deutsche Bank among the establishments that entrust their crypto plumbing to Bitpanda.
Key Points
Raiffeisen Bank International to roll out crypto services with Bitpanda in 11 Central and Eastern European markets
The Raiffeisen network represents around 18 million individual and corporate customers
Six of the eleven countries come under MiCA, the other five require national approvals, hence a staged launch
Bitpanda already provides its white label infrastructure to Deutsche Bank, LBBW, N26 and Lydia
Raiffeisen and Bitpanda: crypto in eleven Central European countries
The Raiffeisen Bank International network covers Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, the Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine. Some 18 million customers have an account there, individuals and businesses combined. No common date has been set: each subsidiary will open the service when its national regulator and its IT systems allow it.
The infrastructure comes from Bitpanda Technology Solutions, the B2B subsidiary of Bitpanda. It supports order execution, private key retention, access to liquidity and compliance building blocks. The bank keeps its application, its brand and customer relations. The customer buys bitcoin without leaving their usual banking environment.
The montage has already been filmed in Austria. Raiffeisenlandesbank Niederösterreich-Wien has opened crypto trading to its retail clients via the same infrastructure, a first for a bank in the country. The move to the regional scale takes this pilot and duplicates it in markets where banking penetration is growing quickly and where offshore platforms have until now captured most of the demand.
MiCA, a crypto passport that stops at the borders of the Union
Six of the eleven targeted markets belong to the European Union: Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia. They fall under the MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) regulation, fully applicable since the end of December 2024. This text allows a service provider authorized in one Member State to operate in all the others without a new license. Bitpanda is among the first players to have obtained this approval.
The five other countries remain outside the Union: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia and Ukraine. Everyone follows their own diet. Serbia regulates digital assets through a 2021 law and Albania issues licenses through its financial supervisory authority. Ukraine is still legislating on virtual assets, in the midst of war. Hence a stair-step deployment rather than a simultaneous launch on eleven markets.
Bitpanda, discreet supplier to European banks
White labeling has become Bitpandaâs second business. Deutsche Bank relies on its teams for the crypto custody service it is preparing. Landesbank Baden-WĂŒrttemberg has retained it for its corporate clients. The neobanks N26 and Lydia are already buying market access from it.
The movement goes far beyond Vienna. BBVA opened the purchase of bitcoin and ether in its application to Spanish individuals after the green light from the regulator. Standard Chartered offers cash to its institutional clients and German savings banks have programmed their own offer via DekaBank.
Bitpanda claims around 6.5 million users since its creation in 2014. The agreement signed with Raiffeisen opens up a pool almost three times larger.
