Banca Sella gets green light to provide crypto services to customers, first in Italy

Banca Sella said it became the first Italian lender to secure a crypto services license from the Bank of Italy under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.

The private bank, which has 50 billion euros ($54 billion) in assets under management and more than 3.1 million customers, said it completed a formal 40-day notification process, clearing it to roll out crypto services to clients later this year.

“Being approved as a crypto-asset services provider will enable Banca Sella to launch in 2026 a solution dedicated to the custody, transfer and receipt of digital assets aimed at selected categories of customers,” the bank said in a website statement.

While the bank’s initial retail crypto plans were routed through its mobile-banking venture, Hype. This new corporate-facing infrastructure relies on a compliance partnership with blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis and an internal digital asset pilot initially built alongside Fireblocks.

Sella joins the roughly 20 major European banks offering crypto asset services under MiCA, including Germany’s Commerzbank and LBBW, France’s Société Générale FORGE and Spain’s BBVA.

The bank is among the founders of Qivalis, a group of 37 European banks aiming to issue a euro-denominated stablecoin this year.

Sella said it is involved in EU tokenization of deposits and payments projects such as Pontes and Appia projects, which are aimed at bolstering the bloc’s financial autonomy.

“The evolution of payments toward instant, interoperable, and programmable models – also driven by the tokenization of currencies and assets – is redefining financial infrastructures at European and global level,” said Andrea Tessera, the bank’s managing director of digital banking.