Bank Leumi taps Galaxy Digital for crypto trading

Bank Leumi, Israel's largest commercial bank, has partnered with the Nasdaq-listed Galaxy Digital to offer cryptocurrency trading to retail customers. Customers of Leumi and its mobile banking arm Pepper will be able to buy, hold and sell Bitcoin, Ether and Solana through a dedicated section of the Leumi Trade app.

Galaxy will supply trading through its GalaxyOne Institutional platform and custody through its GK8-based infrastructure. The service is targeted to launch in early 2027 and still requires approval from the Bank of Israel. It would make Leumi the first Israeli bank to offer direct crypto trading to retail customers; an earlier attempt with Paxos, announced in 2022, never launched.

A regulator's sign-off, not the partnership itself, is what stands between this and Israel's first bank-branded retail crypto product.