Zuger Kantonalbank
Zuger Kantonalbank is the cantonal bank of Zug, founded in 1892 and organized as a listed public-law company with a state guarantee. In October 2023 it became the first Swiss cantonal bank to let its clients buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies in e-banking and in its mobile banking app, next to their shares and funds in the same custody account.
The offer runs through Sygnum Bank, which executes the trades and keeps the coins, so clients need no wallet of their own and no account at a crypto exchange. Clients can choose from nine cryptocurrencies today, including bitcoin, ether, solana and XRP, and the bank gives no advice on them, so every crypto trade is execution only.
Zuger Kantonalbank crypto: nine coins
Clients of Zuger Kantonalbank trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, Avalanche, Cardano, Litecoin, Polygon, XRP, Solana and Uniswap. Each coin has its own internal security number at the bank, and the holdings appear in e-banking next to all other positions. The bank settles all trades through Sygnum Bank, a Swiss bank for digital assets, so the clients have one counterparty.
Trading hours, orders and limits
Clients can enter crypto orders at any time in e-banking and mobile banking, or through their advisor from Monday to Friday between 8:00 and 17:45. Trades run from Monday to Friday between 1:30 and 22:00, also on public holidays, and orders placed outside these hours wait for the next trading window. Prices and settlement are in US dollars, the smallest order is worth USD 200, and only market orders are possible. Each order has a coin limit, for example 100 bitcoin or 1,000 ether.
Fees for crypto trading and custody
The transaction fee of Zuger Kantonalbank falls with the order size, from 1.30 percent up to CHF 50,000 to 0.70 percent above CHF 300,000. The minimum fee of CHF 20 does not apply to orders in e-banking or mobile banking. For crypto in the custody account the bank charges an investment fee of 0.60 percent a year up to CHF 3 million, falling to 0.45 percent above CHF 10 million, plus VAT and billed each quarter.
Upcoming crypto and digital asset events in Switzerland
Opening a crypto account
New clients open an account set online and identify themselves with a biometric passport, and the documents and e-banking access arrive within a few days. In the client portal they then open a custody account and can start trading cryptocurrencies. Existing clients open the custody account in the portal or trade at once if they already hold one.
Custody and transfers
Sygnum Bank holds the coins in crypto custody, so clients keep no keys themselves and need no wallet. Transfers from a wallet of the client into the custody account or out to an own wallet are not possible at the moment. The bank publishes a risk disclosure on digital assets, and its crypto brochure explains how trading in e-banking and mobile banking works.
Address, shareholders and shares
Zuger Kantonalbank has its head office at Bahnhofstrasse 1, 6301 Zug, and runs 14 branches across the canton with about 600 employees. Its share capital of CHF 144.1 million consists of 288,288 registered shares. The canton of Zug holds half of them and may not sell them, about 11,000 private shareholders hold the other half, and the shares trade on the Swiss stock exchange.
The canton of Zug is liable for all obligations of the bank that its own funds do not cover. According to its portrait, the bank finances every second owner-occupied home in the Zug region.
Zuger Kantonalbank and Finance Loop
Banks, asset managers and fintechs in the Finance Loop network deal with the services that Zuger Kantonalbank provides, such as crypto trading for retail clients through a partner bank in the Crypto Valley. Finance Loop discusses these services in the Investment & Digital Assets track and the rules behind them in the Risk & Compliance track.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. 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.