Adoption is still small, but the next wave is much larger

A Genoverband survey of 196 cooperative banks conducted between July 31 and August 21 found that 6% already offer customers a crypto trading solution.

Another 26% plan to introduce one within no more than five months. If those plans are completed, roughly one third of the institutions surveyed could have a live crypto product in the relatively near term.

The share could reach about 59% over the next two years. That figure should not be read as 59% of every cooperative bank in Germany, however. Genoverband covers member institutions across 14 federal states and excludes Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.

About 30% of respondents currently have no plans to enter the market.

meinKrypto lives inside the existing banking app

The technical foundation is DZ BANK's meinKrypto platform, developed with cooperative banking IT provider Atruvia. Rather than sending customers to a separate exchange interface, the wallet is integrated into the VR Banking App.

Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin and Cardano are available in the initial product. DZ BANK received the relevant MiCAR authorization from Germany's BaFin at the end of December 2025.

Individual Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken do not automatically inherit the service. Each institution chooses whether to offer it and has to complete the required MiCAR notification process before activation.

This is self-directed investing, not bank advice

DZ BANK is explicit about the target audience. meinKrypto is designed for self-directed customers and is not part of the traditional investment advisory service offered to retail clients.

That distinction keeps the bank in the role of regulated infrastructure provider rather than turning a branch adviser into someone expected to recommend whether a customer should buy Bitcoin this week.

Custody is handled through Börse Stuttgart Digital Custody, while execution runs through EUWAX. The customer therefore gets a structure that looks much closer to conventional retail brokerage than to managing an external exchange account and private keys independently.

Traditional banks are reacting to app-first competitors

The competitive pressure is easy to see. N26, Revolut and Trade Republic already expose digital-asset trading to customers through interfaces that sit next to ordinary banking or brokerage products.

Genoverband chairman Michael Hoeck has argued that cooperative banks need to respond to rising customer demand rather than hand that business entirely to competitors. He said earlier in 2026 that he expected most Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken to adopt the group's retail crypto offer over time.

Germany's Sparkassen are moving in the same direction, with a crypto offering through DekaBank expected to begin rolling out in October.

A year ago, this was mostly an intention survey

The shift becomes clearer when compared with Genoverband's 2025 research. At that point, 71% of surveyed banks said they were interested in dealing with implementation of a retail crypto solution, while perceived customer demand had more than doubled compared with 2023.

DZ BANK then obtained its MiCAR approval around the end of 2025 and began making meinKrypto available to participating institutions in 2026. The question is gradually moving from whether the cooperative network should build the infrastructure to how many local banks will switch it on.

None of that makes crypto a conventional low-risk savings product. Bitcoin and other digital assets remain highly volatile, and regulated custody does not remove market risk.

What changes is the friction. For a growing number of German banking customers, buying Bitcoin may soon sit only a few taps away from checking a current account.