Austria-based Raiffeisen Bank has announced that it will start rolling out cryptocurrency trading services to retail customers by the end of January 2024. According to the official announcement, the service will initially be offered to customers in Vienna, where the bank is headquartered.

The service will also be provided in association with cryptocurrency exchange Bitpanda, which signed a letter of intent with the bank earlier in 2023. Officials from the bank have stated that the rollout will start in Vienna, as the city is where about a quarter of Austria's population lives. The customer is able to use their mobile device to enter Bitpanda through the Raiffeisen app.

Moreover, the announcement also stated that the experience of this trade will look similar to an account-to-account bank transfer with the same sort of security customers are used to. This move by the bank, which has about USD 215 billion in assets and 17.8 million customers across the European Union and Eastern Europe, is another sign of crypto adoption ramping up, particularly in jurisdictions where clarity around rules is emerging. The service is aimed at customers who are digitally savvy but would perhaps only want to make a small investment, as opposed to offerings from other banks, which are aimed at wealthy individuals with millions to invest.

The banks partner in providing this service, Bitpanda is under the supervision of the FMA in Austria and BaFin in Germany. The company enables firms to offer regulated trading, investment, and custody services for stocks/ETFs, cryptocurrencies, precious metals, and commodities. Other recent crypto developments in Austria In November 2023, it was announced that 48 countries had committed to a new tax transparency standard beginning in 2027 to eliminate crypto-related tax evasion.

The standard allows the automatic exchange of information between jurisdictions to combat tax evasion on crypto exchanges, as per officials’ statements. Austria was amongst the countries that signed the agreement alongside Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Croatia, Japan, South Korea, the US, and Canada. The agreement integrates the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) into the organisation’s Common Reporting Standard (CRS), an information standard for the automatic exchange of data regarding financial accounts between tax authorities.

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