Since allowing consumers to purchase and trade digital assets on its app last year, the bank has seen a huge increase in crypto activity.
The option to buy cryptocurrency through the Commonwealth bank app has received “overwhelmingly favourable” feedback, according to CBA’s managing director of blockchain and digital assets.
On the bank’s app, ten cryptoassets are presently accessible for purchase, including bitcoin and ether.
Since allowing users to buy and trade digital assets last year, Australia’s largest bank by total assets has seen a considerable increase in crypto activity on its app.
Sophie Gilder, managing director of Blockchain and Digital Assets at Commbank, said the response to the bank’s app has been “overwhelmingly positive” on the opening day of Blockchain Australia’s five-day Blockchain Week conference in Sydney.
The app’s success follows Commbank’s secondary market trading of blockchain bonds in 2019 and represents a significant step forward in the country’s consumer adoption of the underlying technology.
Consumers, according to Gilder and many other officials from Macquarie, Visa, and JPMorgan, are driving business decisions around crypto products in a “rapidly developing” environment.
“Over the previous two years, around 900,000 of our customers have transferred money to crypto exchanges,” Gilder added. “CBA has a banking link with one in every three Australians. So we see this activity taking place, and our clients are already there, in this location. Based on our data, you could say it’s already mainstream.”
While the feedback had been mostly good, Gilder added that the bank app’s biggest gripe came from users who had not yet been granted access to the experiment.
In November, CBA announced the beginning of its crypto pilot programme, which would allow select customers to purchase, sell, and hold digital assets directly through the bank’s CommBank app. The bank became the first of its kind in Australia to provide crypto goods directly to customers after starting in December.
Crypto exchange Gemini and blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis were called in to help with the app’s design and custody service. Bitcoin and ether are among the ten cryptoassets now accessible for purchase.
The bank can use Chainalysis’ technologies to “analyse exactly what’s going on on the blockchain,” according to Gilder. “You might not have had that level of confidence five years ago.”
Disclaimer: These are the writer’s opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.
