Europe’s digital bank startup N26 launches crypto trading service with new Bitpanda integration

Fortunes, they say, are made during recessions. This is probably the case for Europe’s $9 billion digital bank N26. Just last week we wrote about the German challenger bank N26 after its reported losses climbed 14% to €172.4 million.

But the setback did not deter the nine-year-old startup from forging ahead with its mission to provide mobile banking and credit card with no transaction fees and no currency conversion fees. Now, the company is making a foray into crypto, perfect timing considering the ongoing recession and crypto winter.

Today, N26 announced the launch of a new crypto trading service in its app called N26 Crypto, The new service will enable N26 customers to easily trade crypto assets using money in their N26 account.

The service, starting with Austria as the first market for the product, is set to become available to N26′s Austrian clients in the coming weeks and will initially include 100 tokens including bitcoin.

Unlike its PayPal arrival, the N26′s crypto service does not include support for custodial wallets. Instead, N26 is partnering with Bitpanda to handle trading and custody.

In an interview, N26′s chief product officer Gilles BianRosa said the bank’s crypto brokerage feature allows users to “dip their toes into the water in a way that’s not frothy.” BianRosa added, “Our users are extremely interested in crypto. That interest remains super high, even in a bear market.”

N26 was founded in 2013 by Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal to offer mobile banking solutions to customers in the European Union through its subsidiary. Today N26 has more than 5 million customers in 25 markets. To date, N26 has raised more than $1.8 billion from the world’s most established investors, including Insight Venture Partners, GIC, Tencent, Allianz X, Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, Greyhound Capital, Battery Ventures, and others.

N26 currently has more than 7 million customers in 25 markets. The company also has 10 office locations: Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, Belgrade, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Vienna, New York, and São Paulo, with over a 1,500-strong team of 80 nationalities based across the globe.