Bitcoin purchases will now be directly available to approximately 24 million customers from 650 US banks and credit unions as a result of a new partnership between the US enterprise payments giant the National Cash Register (NCR) and leading bitcoin dedicated technology and financial services firm NYDIG.
The deal will enable the banks and credit unions to offer crypto trading services to their clients through NCR’s mobile payments applications. The partnership will also make it easy for banks to enable crypto transactions services without having to adhere to the complicated regulatory conditions of holding cryptocurrencies for clients, by using NYDIG crypto-custody services.
Rising Crypto Demand Is Forcing Banks to Play Catch up With Their Customers
According to the NCR, the need to internally facilitate crypto transactions comes from rising demand from its bank clients and credit unions. Both have become weary of losing money from customers making huge transactions accounts directly into crypto exchanges.
While most of the banks have issued warnings to customers, the restlessness and increasing money transfer to exchanges like Coinbase have necessitated a move to provide these services internally, earn through transaction fees and offer investment advisory services to interested clients.
“A lot of these banks have seen that one of the biggest outflows from their depositors is moving money from the bank to exchanges like Coinbase.”
NCR’s president of digital banking, Douglas Brown said that the payments giant is already a firm believer in the benefits of crypto and its strategic application.
“And that’s true for our banking relations, as evidenced by NYDIG, and across retails as well as restaurants and the like.”
Crypto Is Moving Faster Than Banking
Brown added that there’s a huge untapped potential in the crypto market for banks since customers are now more involved in the crypto market than in traditional banking on a daily basis.
“Banking today is a daily or a couple of times a day activity for people, which is what we typically see. Crypto gets to an hourly or sub-hourly level of deepening engagement.”
NYDIG also revealed further, ambitious future plans which include making BTC purchases available via over 80,000 ATMs.
“We have broader ambitions to do a multitude of things with crypto that will extend into our multi-vertical markets, retailers, and restaurants. And then other capabilities oriented around digital banking.”
New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) was founded in 2016 to help Stone Ridge Holdings Group and its employees’ store BTC and other crypto assets in cold storage.
The firm has since expanded its services to cover trade execution, crypto-accounting, finance, and derivatives support and data analysis. The total assets under management at NYDIG currently stand at $6 billion, representing a $2 billion increase from $4 billion in February 2021.
