Bank Leumi, Israel’s largest bank, plans to let customers trade bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and solana (SOL) through its investment app starting in early 2027. The bank has tapped Galaxy Digital (GLXY) to handle custody and execution.
The rollout puts digital-asset trading in front of roughly 2.5 million retail customers across Leumi and its mobile arm PEPPER. Buying, holding and selling will run through a secured section of the Leumi Trade capital-markets app, per a Thursday announcement confirmed by The Block and Decrypt.
Galaxy, led by Mike Novogratz, supplies the institutional stack. Execution flows through GalaxyOne Institutional. Custody runs on GK8, the air-gapped wallet maker Galaxy acquired after Celsius’s collapse, Decrypt reported. The firm holds a New York DFS BitLicense and a May 2026 money-transmission license.
This is Leumi’s second attempt at crypto. In March 2022, Pepper Invest said it would enable BTC and ETH trading through Paxos. That service never launched. Bank of Israel sign-off never arrived. The same regulator now is the gate for the 2027 rollout, and approval is not yet in hand.
“Leumi is the first bank in Israel to bring digital assets to its customers, and it chose Galaxy, to make it possible,” said Lior Lamesh, CEO of Galaxy Israel.
What changed between attempts is the regulatory weather. Until mid-2026, Israeli banks auto-delayed crypto-linked deposits and could refuse fiat from crypto sources outright. Licensed firms could trade only a short coin list with no clear custody-capital rules. Over the summer, Bank of Israel removed the deposit delays and barred blanket refusals of funds from licensed providers. A Capital Market Authority circular took effect August 1, opening trading to the top 50 coins by market cap above a $500 million threshold.
The authority also set wallet-security and capital standards: 2 million new Israeli shekels for non-custody firms, 2.5 million with custody, plus mandatory customer-asset segregation. Banks and licensed venues now operate under clearer custody rules and a wider eligible-coin list than the 2022 framework permitted.
“This initiative represents a significant pillar of the bank’s innovation strategy and enables us to provide customers with simple, secure, and regulated access to trading digital assets through one of the world’s leading technological infrastructures,” said Maya Ravia, head of strategy at Bank Leumi, in a statement. “We believe that digital assets are gradually becoming an integral part of the global financial system.”
The customer base gives the rollout real reach. Leumi serves about 2.5 million retail accounts, Decrypt reported. That is a meaningful share of Israel’s banking market for a first-mover offering.
Demand-side context is sizable. Israel received an estimated $22 billion in onchain crypto value during the 12 months ending June 2025, per Chainalysis data cited by The Block. Across the Middle East and North Africa, onchain activity increased 33% over the prior 12-month period to more than $500 billion.
Lamesh framed the bet in structural terms. “The future of finance will run on open, programmable rails, and we believe the banks that move first will define the era that follows,” he said.
The 2022 attempt died at the regulator. Whether this one clears the same hurdle, and on what timeline beyond “early 2027,” is not yet known. Financial terms of the Leumi-Galaxy partnership were not disclosed. The full list of “selected” cryptocurrencies beyond BTC, ETH and SOL is also unconfirmed.
