SoFi rolls out crypto trading for retail customers

Fintech bank SoFi (SOFI) rolled out crypto trading to retail customers on Tuesday. The move sets the pace as the first of several national banks planning similar moves in the coming months.

SoFi previously gave customers the ability to buy, sell, and hold crypto through its app, but it agreed to shutter that service two years ago to obtain approval for its national banking license.

Starting Tuesday, select retail customers can again trade bitcoin (BTC-USD), ether (ETH-USD), and other crypto assets. The plan is for all of SoFi’s 12.6 million customers to gain access before the end of 2025.

“Today marks a pivotal moment when banking meets crypto in one app,” SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said in a press release statement. “It’s critical to give our members a secure and regulated way to step into the future of money,” Noto added.

Biden-era regulators largely discouraged banks from delving into crypto. US bank regulators have swiftly reversed that stance during President Trump’s first year in office.

In May, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency clarified that banks can engage in crypto custody and execution activities, following similar guidance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation earlier in the year.

In the coming months, several major US banks, including Charles Schwab (SCHW), Morgan Stanley (MS), and super regional lender PNC (PNC), are expected to follow SoFi’s lead by offering retail customers crypto trading.

And there’s a whole bundle of other crypto services US banks expected to push out over the next year, including the use of dollar-pegged stablecoins as payments on collateral for loans. This all follows President Trump’s signing of a federal framework for those assets in July.

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon, Citigroup (C) CEO Jane Fraser, and Bank of America (BAC) CEO Brian Moynihan have all said they are planning to get involved in dollar-pegged stablecoins or tokenized deposits, their FDIC-insured equivalents.

Read more: Can you buy crypto with a credit card? See the pros and cons.

SoFi CEO Anthony Noto laid out SoFi’s crypto plans for next year and describing them as “ambitious” last month during his company’s third quarter earnings call. The plans include issuing SoFi’s own stablecoin and eventually letting customers borrow against their crypto holdings. SoFi already lets customers send payments to and from Mexico using bitcoin’s second-layer protocol, known as the Lightning Network.

Some big crypto players also want to bring banking and digital assets under their own roofs. A number of firms, including Ripple, BitGo, Circle, and Coinbase, are awaiting approval for a specific narrow national banking license offered by the OCC known as a national trust bank charter.

Only one crypto-native firm, Anchorage Digital, currently holds that charter, but it does not directly serve retail customers. Unlike SoFi’s full service license, that charter doesn’t permit the accepting deposits and making loans.

Along with Robinhood Markets (HOOD) and Coinbase Global (COIN) — both non-bank companies with far longer tenured crypto trading platforms — SoFi is pursuing the goal of offering a one-stop shop or “everything” app for financial services.

Though arriving later to the crypto trading party than some of other fintechs, SoFi has already leaned hard into its banking license as its edge.

About 60% of SoFi’s crypto customers say they’d prefer trading and holding crypto with a licensed bank over a primary crypto trading platform, according to the company’s survey results.

David Hollerith covers the financial sector, ranging from the country’s biggest banks to regional lenders, private equity firms, and the cryptocurrency space.

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