CommBank to offer Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin investment via app

CommBank customers will be able to buy, sell and hold up to 10 crypto assets like Bitcoin, in an Australian-first for the big bank.

CBA has partnered with one of the world’s largest regulated crypto exchanges and custodians, Gemini, and blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.

Crypto assets are poised to enter the mainstream financial system, with Commonwealth Bank becoming the nation’s first retail bank to offer customers the ability to buy, sell and hold bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies directly through the CommBank app.

CBA has partnered with one of the world’s largest regulated crypto exchanges and custodians, Gemini, and blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.

The partnerships have enabled the bank to design a crypto exchange and custody service that will be offered to customers through a new feature in the app, with a pilot to start in the coming weeks and a rollout to more customers in 2022.

CBA will provide customers with access to up to ten selected crypto assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin, but has tried to rebut concerns about the potential for fraud and security breaches by creating a closed-loop system to prevent wallet-to-wallet transfers from other exchanges.

CBA chief executive Matt Comyn. Picture: Adam Yip

“That allows us to control the customer onboarding and KYC (know your customer anti-money laundering rules),” chief executive Matt Comyn said.

“So we’ve proposed a lower-risk model to Austrac.

“Obviously if you opened up, which we’re not doing, there’s a multitude of different ways for currency to come into your environment, and that certainly has higher risks.”

While estimates vary, Mr Comyn said about 8 per cent of the Australian population currently invested in crypto - a figure which had grown rapidly over the last 12 months.

“We think there’s an opportunity to offer our customers an institutional-grade, high quality and secure offering,” he said.

“Clearly what’s on everyone’s minds is the convenience and integration into the overall banking experience, which we see as both banking and investing.”

Mr Comyn also said the value associated with crypto was “imputed”.

“I don’t know what the long term value will be - you can make the case on either side, but I do think it’s much more than the pure investment. “Crypto broadly defined includes a whole range of assets and sub-assets.

“Clearly the regulators are watching the stablecoins, in particular, given the size of about $120bn has grown about 20 times.

“And there’s real questions being asked about some of those stablecoins and whether there’s any sort of capital or liquidity behind those, but we’re not offering those products.”

The central bankers’ club, the Bank for International Settlements, was scathing about crypto assets earlier this year, describing them as speculative assets rather than money.

In many cases, the BIS said, they were used to support money laundering, ransomware attacks and other financial crimes.

Bitcoin, in particular it said, had few redeeming public interest attributes, and its so-called mining activities also had a “wasteful energy footprint”.