DZ BANK

DZ BANK has two connected roles: central institution for the cooperative banking network and commercial bank for companies and institutions. Local Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken remain independent institutions with their own customers. DZ BANK supplies central financial services that support those banks and also works directly with corporate and institutional clients.

Corporate customers use financing to fund investment and business operations, while capital-market services provide additional ways to raise or invest money. Payments, liquidity management and international banking help companies manage the financial side of their trading relationships.

DZ BANK provides electronic banking for companies that need to retrieve account information and send payment instructions. GENO cash and the Multiport portal support this access, including through the EBICS banking standard. Multiport can bring information and payment functions from multiple bank connections into one working environment.

The DZ Banking portal gives corporate customers access to their financial status, credit lines and messages, with a connection to Multiport for payments. These tools support corporate treasury, where staff coordinate cash availability and the timing of payments. They help connect banking information with the financial decisions a business makes each day.

At the end of December 2025, BaFin granted DZ BANK authorization under the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) for its crypto platform meinKrypto (DZ BANK, in German). meinKrypto is a crypto wallet built into the VR Banking App, the app customers of the Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken already use for their current account. At launch it offers bitcoin, ether, litecoin and cardano.

DZ BANK provides the platform, and each local cooperative bank decides whether its own customers get it. In the report on the license from Cryptonews, Sujha Sundararajan wrote that the offer is aimed at self-directed retail investors and that 71 percent of the 670 cooperative banks were considering crypto services. Boerse Stuttgart Digital keeps the crypto assets in custody, and EUWAX AG executes the orders, as the page on BSDEX sets out. The law firm Heuking advised DZ BANK on the MiCAR authorization, according to the Finance Loop overview of law firms for digital assets.

Before meinKrypto, DZ BANK worked on tokenization for institutional clients. From 23-27 September 2024, it used the Trigger Solution from Deutsche Bundesbank for the automated post-trade processing of a Smart Derivative Contract, settled in central bank money (Deutsche Bundesbank). Together with KfW, DZ BANK carried out the first issuance of a crypto security whose full lifecycle, from creation to payment, ran on a public blockchain (DZ BANK).

On the buy side, DZ BANK, DekaBank and Union Investment bought the Siemens digital bond issued on Polygon under the Electronic Securities Act (eWpG), and DZ BANK was a joint lead manager of the 100 million euro digital bond from NRW.BANK on Polygon. DZ BANK also bought the first DLT-native commercial paper from the European Investment Bank on the D7 platform from Clearstream. For payments, DZ BANK took part in the Commercial Bank Money Token pilot of the German banking industry, described on the page on tokenized deposits, and it is among the first participants of Pontes, the ECB service that settles wholesale transactions in tokenized assets in central bank money (ECB).

A German bank that wants to offer crypto trading or custody needs an authorization as a crypto-asset service provider under MiCAR, granted by BaFin. The page on the CASP license explains the procedure, and MiCA in Germany covers what BaFin asks of banks. For meinKrypto the authorization sits with DZ BANK, and each cooperative bank that offers the wallet files its own MiCAR notification with BaFin.

Tokenized bonds follow a different law: the eWpG lets an issuer create a crypto security in a register kept by a licensed registrar. The page on tokenization in Germany covers these registers and the banks that use them.

DZ BANK is an event and network partner of Finance Loop, and Finance Loop thanked DZ BANK AG in its review of its first year. The event graphic of the Digital Finance Night Frankfurt, which Finance Loop hosted on the evening of the Crypto Assets Conference, names DZ Bank, and a speaker from DZ PRIVATBANK was on its program. At the Frankfurt Forum on Digital Assets & Applications, organized by d-fine and announced on the Finance Loop blog, DZ Bank spoke on the panel about payments in DLT-based markets next to Deutsche Bundesbank, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and AllUnity.

DZ BANK serves cooperative banks, companies and institutional customers. The local Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken retain their own customer relationships, while DZ BANK provides central services and also maintains direct corporate and institutional banking relationships.

Corporate customers can retrieve account information and manage payments through electronic-banking tools such as Multiport and GENO cash. The DZ Banking portal also provides financial-status information, credit-line information and a customer mailbox.

Yes, through meinKrypto in the VR Banking App, if the customer's local Volksbank or Raiffeisenbank has chosen to offer it. DZ BANK holds the MiCAR authorization for the platform. Customers of banks that do not take part cannot use it.

Boerse Stuttgart Digital keeps the crypto assets in custody for the platform from DZ BANK. The page on crypto custody explains what custody means for an investor if a provider fails.

DZ BANK is a shareholder of Qivalis, a company in Amsterdam that prepares a euro stablecoin under MiCAR. DZ BANK joined at the end of 2025 as the eleventh bank, and since May 2026 Qivalis has 37 member banks. On 14 October 2026 De Nederlandsche Bank authorized Qivalis as an e-money institution. Qivalis has not issued a token yet, so it is not among the ten largest euro stablecoins.