Germany’s second-largest lender DZ Bank secures retail crypto trading MiCA license

Germany’s DZ Bank revealed it received regulatory approval from BaFin under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework, enabling it to offer meinKrypto, a digital asset trading platform targeted at retail clients through the cooperative banking system.

The announcement follows a broader trend in Germany, where traditional financial institutions are entering the crypto space under the MiCA regime. DekaBank, another cooperative group player, debuted crypto trading and custodial services for institutions in early 2025. DZ Bank's rollout signals that crypto is moving from institutional experimentation to mainstream financial infrastructure.

The license, granted in late December, marks a shift for the Frankfurt-based lender. While DZ Bank partnered with Boerse Stuttgart Digital in 2024 to offer crypto services to institutional clients, the new platform paves the way for retail adoption via the Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken.

Integrated into the VR Banking App, meinKrypto provides crypto wallets and access to trading bitcoin BTC$95,028.17, ether ETH$3,294.42, LTC$78.73 and ADA$0.4233. The service is aimed at self-directed investors and is not part of the advisory services for retail customers.

DZ Bank created meinKrypto for the primary institutions of the cooperative financial group, and it will be available to these institutions shortly. “This will allow individual institutions to offer their retail customers the opportunity to trade cryptocurrencies,” the bank said in a statement.

To do so, cooperative banks, Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken, must now apply to BaFin for MiCAR notification for meinKrypto, a wallet integrated into the VR Banking app.

Once they receive the notification and have implemented the service, their customers will be able to invest in cryptocurrencies entirely digitally. More than 71% of cooperative banks in Germany’s cooperative banking association are interested in offering crypto services to private customers, according to a September 2025 study by Genoverband.

DZ BANK did not immediately respond to a request by CoinDesk for information.