Germany's savings banks start crypto trading: “When a savings bank starts is for it to decide”

Since today, Monday, October 19, 2026, the first Sparkasse customers have been able to buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the App Sparkasse. Five assets are tradable: Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana and Polygon. Behind the offering stands DekaBank, the securities house of the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe, with custody run in cooperation with Boerse Stuttgart. There is no nationwide launch date.

"When a savings bank starts is for it to decide," Joachim Schmalzl, a managing board member of the German Savings Banks Association (DSGV), told the news agency dpa. "Interest within the group is high," Schmalzl added. Another 30 to 40 institutions are to join each month, and in the first half of 2027 the association wants a large share of the interested savings banks connected. The details are in the dpa report of October 19, 2026.

For around 50 million Sparkasse customers, the barrier to entry has just moved. Buying Bitcoin used to mean registering with a crypto exchange, running a second account and finding a custody solution of your own. Going through your own bank saves those steps. It costs something else instead, and that is what this article is about: control over your own coins. Our assessment of the launch while it was still only planned is in our overview of crypto trading at Sparkasse.

Krypto - powered by Deka: DekaBank's execution-only offering

The product is called "Krypto - powered by Deka" and is, according to DekaBank, an execution-only offering available exclusively to Sparkasse customers. Execution-only means the savings bank does not check whether a crypto investment suits your financial position, and it does not recommend a purchase either. DekaBank puts it on its product page as being aimed "exclusively at self-directed investors," with no advice given at the savings bank.

Execution-only is not a footnote, it is the legal foundation of the whole construction. In investment advice, the institution is liable for a recommendation matching the client's profile. Remove the advice and that check goes with it. The DSGV stresses that from the savings banks' point of view cryptocurrencies remain "highly speculative investments," and it points customers explicitly to sharp price swings and the risk of total loss. According to the association, there are no plans to market the product actively on a broad scale.

DekaBank says it is a notified crypto asset service provider and holds the cryptocurrencies in custody for its clients. Notified, under the EU's MiCA regulation, means the institution has extended its existing banking licence to cover crypto services and needs no separate authorisation. For investors that is the decisive difference from an offshore exchange, because supervision, the complaints route and insolvency law all sit in Germany.

No nationwide launch date: 30 to 40 savings banks join each month

Around 350 independent savings banks each decide on their own start. Crypto trading can therefore already be in the app in Hamburg while Passau waits until the spring. If you find nothing in the app today, you do not have a technical problem, you have an institution that is not yet connected. The association gives the pace as 30 to 40 houses a month and the target as the first half of 2027.

In arithmetic terms that pace means this: a good eight months lie between today and the end of June 2027, and at 35 institutions a month just under 290 houses would come on board. The phrase "a large share of the interested savings banks" leaves open how many institutions want to take part at all. A house that decides against the offering never shows up in that figure.

The crypto account in the App Sparkasse: the "Anlegen" section and push TAN

Access runs through a dedicated crypto account at DekaBank, opened inside the App Sparkasse. According to DekaBank you open the "Anlegen" investing section in the app, call up "Krypto - powered by Deka" there and open the account in a few steps. A current account at a participating savings bank is the prerequisite. Approvals run through the familiar online banking security tools, such as push TAN.

The portfolio value then appears alongside the other accounts in the same app. That is the strength of the model and at the same time its blind spot: the coins sit visibly inside your banking, but they do not sit in your hands. The section on withdrawals below sets out what follows from that.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana and Polygon: the five tradable cryptocurrencies

The selection is deliberately narrow. According to DekaBank's product page, Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Solana (SOL) and Polygon (POL) are tradable. Memecoins, small altcoins and stablecoins are absent entirely. By market capitalisation these five assets cover the largest part of the market without the bank having to put thinly traded tokens into a mass-market product.

Two details are worth a second look. First, DekaBank lists Polygon as POL rather than MATIC; the token was renamed, and the bank follows the new designation. Second, there is no staking function at all. Ethereum, Solana and Polygon all allow rewards to be earned on the network when tokens are committed. The Sparkasse offering has no such option, so a holding sits there without any running yield.

If you need a broader selection, staking or payouts to any address of your choosing, a regulated crypto exchange as a second route is unavoidable. Our overview is in the comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

Omnibus wallet at DekaBank: why the private key is not yours

A private key is the secret key that opens access to crypto assets. Whoever holds it can move the coins. With "Krypto - powered by Deka" the private keys are, in the bank's words, held "in trust" for clients in a "jointly managed omnibus wallet."

Omnibus means that all clients' holdings sit in one shared pot on the blockchain, not in separate addresses per person. Who is entitled to which share follows solely from the bank's internal books. On the blockchain, your share is not identifiable as yours. This is the usual route at banks and large exchanges, and it works reliably for as long as the bookkeeping is correct and the institution solvent.

One point hangs on that which the marketing rarely mentions: crypto assets do not fall under the statutory deposit guarantee scheme. DekaBank writes this itself. The 100,000 euros that protect your savings account do not apply here. The protection comes instead from custody law, which separates crypto assets held in custody from the bank's own assets. Even with professional custody, risks remain, for instance from external attacks on blockchain infrastructure, as the bank concedes in its risk disclosure.

Withdrawals only to CASP addresses: your own hardware wallet stays excluded

This is the hardest restriction in the offering, and it is written out in DekaBank's own glossary: a withdrawal is only possible to the wallet addresses of certain crypto asset service providers, meaning other licensed providers, CASPs in the jargon. "A withdrawal to other wallet addresses is excluded," it reads.

In everyday terms: you can send your Bitcoin from Sparkasse to a regulated exchange, but not to a Ledger or Trezor in your drawer. Self-custody, the actual core of the Bitcoin promise, is not provided for in this product. Taking the coins into your own hands requires an intermediate step through a provider that permits withdrawals to private addresses.

The mechanism behind it is regulatory, not technical. Under the anti-money-laundering transfer rule, providers have to collect details about the recipient of a transfer and, for payments to self-custodied addresses, additionally verify who owns the address. Many houses solve that workload by not offering such payouts at all. The restriction is therefore not an oversight but a product decision that avoids verification duties.

Fixed-price trades instead of an order book: where the spread sits behind 99 cents an order

Trading does not run through an order book in which buyers and sellers meet. According to DekaBank, a binding price guaranteed by the bank is provided for each transaction for a limited period. You see a fixed price, click to accept it and know what you are getting.

That is convenient, and it shifts the cost to a place no price list discloses. In a fixed-price trade the provider earns on the difference between its own purchase price in the market and the guaranteed price for the client, the spread. An order fee can be compared, a spread cannot, as long as it goes unquantified. Our own review of the price information for crypto assets, September 2026 edition, was published by cryptoticker.io on October 10, 2026: the transaction fee for buying and selling came to 0.99 euros there, there was no minimum order size, and the spread was not named in the documents examined. Those figures come from our article on the fees and are not external evidence for today's position; check the current version in the price and service list of your own savings bank.

A comparison makes the order of magnitude tangible. On a purchase of 1,000 euros the order fee is 99 cents, which is 0.099 percent. If the spread is one percent, the same purchase costs 10 euros on top. The visible fee is, in that case, the smaller part of the price.

No deposit guarantee for crypto assets: what applies during outages and maintenance windows

In its disclosure, DekaBank names three situations in which trading can be restricted: unusual market conditions, technical faults and scheduled maintenance windows. Buying or selling is then not possible at any time of your choosing or at the price you are aiming for.

In practice that matters more than it sounds. Crypto markets move at night, at weekends and on public holidays too. Wanting to sell into a slump and running into a maintenance window means carrying the price move until trading reopens. A crypto exchange with an order book knows the same risk, but it usually stays open continuously and offers limit orders that trigger automatically. DekaBank's fixed-price model has no such tool.

The 1,000 euro exemption limit: what DekaBank says about tax

On taxation, DekaBank points to the exemption limit of 1,000 euros a year for private disposals, which under current law include gains from trading cryptocurrencies. If the annual gain stays below that threshold, the proceeds are tax free. The bank attaches the 2026 position to that statement, together with the note that tax treatment depends on personal circumstances and may in future be changed even retroactively, for instance by legislation or a different reading by the tax authorities.

An exemption limit is not an allowance: exceed it by one euro and the entire gain becomes taxable, not just the part above it. It also matters that the bank issues no tax certificate of the kind it provides for shares, because crypto gains are not subject to withholding tax. Recording them therefore remains a matter for your tax return, and anyone trading on an exchange as well is merging two histories.

Our assessment: the distribution channel weighs more than the product range

In the view of this desk, this launch is the more important crypto event of the year for German retail investors, and not because of the product. Five coins, no staking, no withdrawal to your own wallet and a fixed price with no disclosed spread add up to less than any regulated exchange offers. The leverage lies in distribution: the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe reaches around 50 million customers through an app those customers already open every day. That is reach no crypto provider in Germany can buy.

Against it stands the construction itself. Buy crypto as a hedge against bank risk and you get the opposite here: a claim against a bank, booked in a shared pot, with no deposit guarantee, no key and no route to self-custody. Both are documented, the omnibus custody and the exclusion of third-party wallet addresses, in DekaBank's risk disclosure and glossary. As a first entry with small amounts inside familiar banking, the offering is usable. As a permanent home for a larger holding, it lacks control. None of this is a recommendation to buy or sell, and the risk of total loss remains in every case.

Sparkasse crypto trading: DekaBank holds the key, not you

Three steps put the situation in order:

1. Settle custody before you buy. As long as withdrawals only run to service provider addresses, the holding stays in someone else's keeping. Holding coins yourself requires a device and a provider that permits withdrawals to private addresses. The devices sit side by side in the hardware wallet comparison.
2. Keep a tax history from day one. Without a tax certificate the burden of proof is yours, and with two routes running at once two histories quickly turn into one gap. The tools for it are in the overview of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
3. Weigh up a second route. Staking, limit orders, a broader selection and unrestricted payouts are not part of the bank offering. Which licensed houses cover them is shown in the comparison of the best regulated crypto exchanges.

(As of October 19, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)