Bank Leumi and Galaxy Digital, the largest bank in Israel, announced cooperation on 14 August, with a plan to allow Leumi and its mobile bank brand PEPPER clients to buy, hold and sell part of their digital assets in the capital market application of Leumi Trade, the first of which included Bitcoin, Ether and Solana. The parties claimed that Leumi would thus be the first bank in Israel to provide digital assets trading services to its clients.
This service is currently not open. The official press release gave a “expected early 2027” go-live and clients still have to wait for product implementation and related processes to be completed. Therefore, today's event is the release of cooperation and product plans, not the list that the user can already place in the App. Any title that reads “Leumi has now opened an encrypted transaction” will change the future to the present.
The cooperative division of labour shows that Leumi is responsible for client-oriented bank entrances and the application of Leumi Trade and Galaxy provides an institutional digital asset infrastructure. According to the official draft, the trading function would be located in an independent and secure area within the application; Leumi would use the GalaxyOne Informational platform for banks, asset management companies and other institutions, and would sign an agreement with Galaxy-based institutional custodian entities to provide hosting capacity for the bank ' s digital asset infrastructure.
This model is not for banks to build their own exchanges or direct customers to a retail encryption platform. For clients, access, identity checks and asset presentations remain as far as possible in the original banking experience; for banks, specialized capabilities such as transaction execution and hosting are supported by external infrastructure providers. The parties still need to identify costs, scope of participation, transaction limits, tax treatment, asset extraction and risk disclosure, and the official bulletin has not yet given all product specifications.
Lower operating thresholds for intra-bank transactions and centralization of compliance responsibilities
When common users enter the encrypted market, they often open accounts on exchanges, transfer funds, manage wallets and process tax records. The products in the bank App can reduce account switching and allow French funds, securities and digital assets to be managed in the same interface. Institutional hosting also reduces the risk of error, loss of collateral and attacks on personal equipment for customers who do not wish to keep their own private keys.
But “favourable” does not mean “no risk”. Bitcoin, Taifung and Solana prices are still likely to fluctuate sharply, and hosting arrangements do not eliminate market, technical and operational risks. The ability of customers to refer assets to outside wallets is particularly critical: when sold only within the banking system, it is provided with price openings and hosting services, rather than full chain capacity, and if currency is allowed, banks need more sophisticated address screening and transaction monitoring.
For Leumi, the bank entrance meant greater responsibility. Customer identification, anti-money-laundering, sanctions screening, unusual transaction control and asset source review are linked to traditional accounts. Once the encrypted transaction is linked to bank deposits and securities accounts, the risk team needs to identify the address on the chain, cross-platform transfers and fraud. Partners provide technology that does not transfer the bank ' s own regulatory obligations together.
Galaxy obtained a model for an agency's distribution. Digital Asset Infrastructure (DII) competition is no longer limited to serving home-grown encryption funds, but also includes the ability to embed bank compliance, hosting and transaction processes. If the platform is able to operate steadily and through review by large banks, the persuasiveness of future replication to other markets will be enhanced; in turn, the impact of any system failure or compliance incident will be magnified.
The real change in industry is the movement of banks from “enabled transfers” to “provide transactions”
In the past, the relationship between traditional banks and encrypted assets has often stayed on whether or not to allow customers to remit to the exchange. Leumi's new plan takes a step forward: banks not only deal with French currency access money, but also place digital assets as capital market products in their own applications. This would allow customer relationships, transactional data and service income to remain in the banking system and reduce the ability of third-party exchanges to monopolize access.
Risk control is also reflected in the selection of the first assets. Bitcoin and Ethera have deeper markets and more mature institutional products, while Solana has expanded to another active public chain, but there is no official commitment to open up large amounts of coins. Banks are more likely to use limited asset lists, phased up and strictly appropriate management, rather than a model that replicates hundreds of exchange currencies.
The success of the product depends on details outside the bulletin. The competitiveness of the trade-point differentials and hosting fees, the coverage of all retail customers in the services, the transfer of assets, the treatment of forklifts or drops, and the automatic generation of tax documents will determine the willingness of clients to migrate from existing platforms. It is expected that early 2027 will also allow the parties time for testing and compliance preparation, with the actual dates likely to be adjusted.
This cooperation is not the end of the “bank's full embrace of encryption”, but a concrete attempt by traditional finance to redefine service boundaries. It demonstrates that large banks are willing to place digital asset transactions in their main applications, but it also proves that the introduction of institutionalization is slow: There are still months between the announcement of cooperation and a genuine opening, and there is also a line-by-line approach to hosting, enforcement, compliance and client protection. The most valuable for the industry was not three lists of tokens, but a large bank that had begun to treat encrypted transactions as a financial function that could be standardizedly delivered.