Bank Leumi bitcoin trading plan targets early 2027 launch

Bank Leumi bitcoin trading is back on the agenda, but customers cannot use the service yet. Leumi and Galaxy Digital announced plans for Leumi and Pepper customers to buy, hold and sell selected digital assets through the Leumi Trade app, with an expected early-2027 rollout.

For investors, the key point is timing: this is a proposed bank-integrated trading service, not a live product. According to a report by Decrypt, republished by Yahoo Finance, the launch remains subject to Bank of Israel sign-off.

When will Bank Leumi bitcoin trading be available?

Bank Leumi and Galaxy say the service is expected to become available in early 2027. Neither company said that trading is currently open to customers.

Leumi and Pepper, the bank's mobile digital banking arm, would offer the service inside the Leumi Trade capital-markets application. The companies said trades would take place in a dedicated secured section of the app.

The named assets are Bitcoin, Ether and Solana. The announcement describes them as examples of selected digital assets, so it does not establish a full list of cryptocurrencies that may eventually be available.

How the proposed service would work

Galaxy is set to provide two parts of the underlying setup, according to the companies' Aug. 14 announcement. GalaxyOne Institutional, its platform for banks and asset managers, would support trading and related services. Galaxy Custody Infrastructure, formerly known as GK8, would support Leumi's digital-asset infrastructure.

Custody is the storage and safeguarding of digital assets and the cryptographic credentials used to control them. In this arrangement, customers would trade through Leumi's app rather than needing to use a separate crypto exchange interface, based on the companies' description.

Leumi and Galaxy described the planned product as regulated and secure. Those are the companies' characterizations, not evidence that the service has received final approval or is operating.

Why this is a second attempt

The plan follows an earlier, unsuccessful effort. Pepper Invest said in March 2022 that it intended to enable Bitcoin and Ether trading through Paxos, but that product did not launch after required regulatory approval was not obtained, according to Decrypt's report.

That history makes the pending approval central to the current announcement. The new plan has a different infrastructure partner and includes Solana among the named assets, but its proposed launch remains forward-looking.

In their joint announcement, Leumi and Galaxy called the arrangement the first bank offering of digital-asset trading in Israel and described Leumi as the country's largest bank. Those are first-party claims. The companies also cautioned that forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause outcomes to differ from expectations.

This story draws on original reporting from Decrypt.