FRANKFURT, Nov 11 (Reuters) – Deutsche Bank said on Wednesday that its digital asset custody service had gone live for paying clients, as European banks show increasing openness to digital markets.
• Germany’s largest lender initially announced in September that it planned a custody service for institutional and corporate clients in Europe, pending regulatory approvals.
• It said at the time that the business would support the safekeeping and storage of digital assets, including bitcoin and ether.
• “In the medium term we aim to deliver a fully integrated, regulated ecosystem that supports the custody, tokenisation, and settlement of digital assets,” said Paul Maley, global head of trust and securities services at Deutsche Bank.
• Deutsche Bank has previously told Reuters it wanted to expand the offering to Asia.
• Deutsche Bank also said on Wednesday that it had entered into a memorandum of understanding with Deutsche Asset Management, the money manager it mostly owns and that until recently was known as DWS.
• The agreement is “to explore comprehensive commercial and technical collaboration opportunities in the digital asset space”.
(Reporting by Tom Sims, editing by Thomas Seythal)
