French Giant Bank BNP Paribas to Launch Crypto Custody Business

France-based BNP Paribas, the second largest global bank in Europe, has become the latest banking giant to enter the crypto custody business.

BNP Paribas announced on Tuesday that it has partnered with Swiss-based crypto infrastructure firm Metaco to enable the offering of digital assets custody services to its customers. The development was revealed by three people who are familiar with the deal.

What makes the deal significant is BNP Paribas Securities Services, the custodian subsidiary of the bank, which holds over $12 trillion under custody, is the one gearing to focus on offering institutional-grade custody for digital assets.

Expanding Institutional Digital Assets Capabilities

In recent months, Metaco formed partnership deals with several banks to develop digital asset custody platforms.

Last month, on June 30, French bank Societe Generale (GLE) selected Swiss cryptocurrency custody firm Metaco to support its digital asset custody operations. Metaco was tapped to offer digital asset custody for customers in the bank’s digital asset subsidiary, SG FORGE, which will majorly focus on security tokens.

Societe Generale now provides various capital market products to institutional clients under a native security token format on Tezos and Ethereum with whole banking level regulatory and safety compliance.

The partnership enabled SG FORGE to continue integrating security tokens into traditional finance, and leveraging Metaco's bank-grade digital asset custody and orchestration platform, Harmonize, to further expand its offering at scale.

Also, last month, US multinational investment bank Citi selected Swiss tech firm Metaco to develop and pilot digital asset custody capabilities.

The partnership brought together Metaco’s tech and digital solutions with Citi’s custody network to develop a platform that will enable Citi clients to store and settle digital assets securely.

Citi plans to fully integrate Metaco’s bank-grade digital asset custody and orchestration platform, Harmonize, into its existing infrastructure.

The service that Metaco is offering to Citi and Societe Generale works to bridge digital and traditional assets.

With Metaco’s service, SocGen and Citi are leveraging their infrastructure to support their vision of bridging traditional and digital finance, focused on security tokens, like tokenized versions of stocks or other financial instruments, with less of an emphasis on pure cryptocurrencies.

In the past, the likes of Spanish major bank BBVA, London-based Zodia Custody, Singapore multinational bank DBS, and UnionBank Philippines also partnered with Metaco to enable digital assets custody services to their clients.