Sygnum Bank
Sygnum Bank is a Swiss bank in Zurich that provides banking services for digital assets. Customers can buy and sell cryptocurrencies and have their assets held in custody, with the bank controlling access to the holdings it manages. Sygnum holds a banking and securities dealer license from the Swiss financial regulator FINMA.
Sygnum also supplies crypto trading and custody infrastructure to other banks. Partner banks connect through interfaces and offer these services within their own apps, including access to bitcoin. This lets a bank add digital asset services without building the entire trading and custody operation itself.
Digital-asset banking and investment services
Sygnum combines digital-asset services with complementary banking and investment products. The offering includes custody, trading, payments and lending, as well as access to traditional assets such as equities, bonds and exchange-traded funds. These services address the cash and investment needs of private clients, companies, asset managers and institutions.
Other banks can use Sygnum's infrastructure to add digital-asset products to their own services. Interfaces connect partner-bank systems with custody, trading and related banking functions. This business model combines the specialist bank's infrastructure with the customer relationships and distribution channels of its partners.
Banking services for other banks
Under its B2B banking line, partner banks connect to Sygnum through APIs and use accounts, payments, custody, brokerage, tokenization and lending; Sygnum names more than 25 partner banks and a setup time of under 60 days, and states that client assets are held off its balance sheet. PostFinance opened crypto trading and custody to its customers with Sygnum as custody partner, keeping custody inside Switzerland, as Crypto Valley describes, and moneycab lists BancaStato offering crypto trading via Sygnum and Avaloq. Banks offering crypto compares how banks bring such services to their customers.
Licenses and tokenization
FINMA granted Sygnum its banking license in August 2019, the same month as AMINA Bank, as crypto in Switzerland explains. Sygnum Pte Ltd holds a capital markets services license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the group is also regulated in Abu Dhabi and Luxembourg, according to moneycab. Sygnum's digital asset trading facility received clearance from FINMA as part of Sygnum's tokenization offer for issuance, settlement, custody and secondary trading of tokenized securities.
Sygnum and Swiss franc payments on a ledger
Sygnum is one of nine participants in a Swiss sandbox for the franc stablecoin CHFD, together with UBS, PostFinance, Raiffeisen, Zürcher Kantonalbank, BCV, SIX, TWINT and Swiss Stablecoin AG, UBS announced. The pilot tests tokenized settlement of digital assets, automated transactions between financial institutions and programmable payments, with limits on participants and transaction sizes. Frankencoin covers the Swiss franc stablecoins in use, and the knowledge hub explains what stablecoins are.
Upcoming digital asset and bitcoin events
Swiss crypto banking at Finance Loop
Finance Loop's seminar Bitcoin for Investors covers the custody models open to investors, and bitcoin seminars in Switzerland describes how Zürcher Kantonalbank and PostFinance, the latter with Sygnum, offer bitcoin in their banking apps. Custody is also a topic of Finance Loop's own Digital Finance Night.
Investment & Digital Assets
Payments & Digital Money
Risk & Compliance
Is Sygnum a real bank?
Yes. Sygnum Bank AG holds a banking and securities dealer license from FINMA, the Swiss financial market supervisor, and is supervised like any other Swiss bank.
Which banks work with Sygnum?
Sygnum names more than 25 partner banks for its B2B banking. PostFinance uses Sygnum for crypto custody, and BancaStato offers crypto trading via Sygnum and Avaloq.
Where does Sygnum operate?
Sygnum is based in Zurich, holds a license in Singapore and is also regulated in Abu Dhabi and Luxembourg.
Crypto banking in Switzerland
Banks and custody firms
Sygnum Bank and Finance Loop
Employees of Sygnum Bank regularly attend Finance Loop events.
Finance Loop covers bank custody and bitcoin in its seminar Bitcoin for Investors and at its Digital Finance Night. Crypto banking belongs to Finance Loop's Investment & Digital Assets track, stablecoin settlement to Payments & Digital Money.
Finance Loop is a professional network supporting the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, digital payments, cloud and blockchain solutions. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.