Key Takeaways:
- Raiffeisen Bank International and Bitpanda are developing a digital-asset-services group-wide framework in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
- Bitpanda Enterprise will be responsible for the infrastructure, which may be extended through RBI’s network of over 18 million customers.
- The rollout will occur market by market, as a crypto-banking model was first implemented by a Raiffeisen bank in Austria in 2024.
Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is taking its crypto strategy beyond Austria, partnering with Bitpanda to build a common framework for digital assets across its Central and Eastern European network. The deal puts crypto closer to the banking apps and financial relationships already used by millions of customers.
Bitpanda Infrastructure Behind RBI’s Crypto Expansion
In exchange for the partnership, RBI’s network banks get access to Bitpanda Enterprise, the B2B infrastructure arm of the European crypto platform. The framework won’t mandate banks to create their own technology stack for digital assets, but instead to offer a shared infrastructure layer.
Bitpanda Enterprise claims their institutional technology addresses digital-asset investment infrastructure, liquidity, custody, payments, stablecoins and tokenization. The introduction of services will be a decision for individual RBI banks based on the local markets and regulatory needs.
The group serves 18.8 million customers; RBI has subsidiary banks in 11 CEE markets. Some 18 million customers is the potential regional size of the digital-asset framework, the companies say, not the number receiving crypto services right now.
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Austria Pilot Becomes the Expansion Model
It followed a 2024 integration that made Raiffeisen Landesbank Niederösterreich-Wien (RLB NÖ-Wien) one of the first traditional EU banks to offer customers access to crypto via an established banking framework via Bitpanda.
The new arrangement changes the scale of that model. RBI and Bitpanda are creating an integration framework instead of one bank which could be followed by the entire banking ecosystem.
RBI CEO Michael Höllerer said the bank is witnessing increasing demand for crypto assets in its markets and is catering it via its collaboration with Bitpanda.
It’s also evidence of a larger B2B trend in crypto: banks can leverage specialised infrastructure providers instead of building out everything themselves. According to Bitpanda’s research, licensing and ease of integration are key factors for financial institutions when selecting crypto partners.
Rollout Will Depend on Local Crypto Rules
The partnership does not imply that the same crypto products will be available in all 11 markets at the same time.
RBI and Bitpanda said they will implement it in a gradual manner that is customized by the jurisdiction. That’s the actual product and services that will be offered, and the fees (prepaid or recurring) that the customer will pay, for each market launch and not for one single offering regionwide.
For Bitpanda, the deal adds another major banking distribution channel in Europe. For RBI, it provides a common technological foundation for expanding digital-asset services while leaving individual markets to determine how those services are introduced.
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