Citi will offer direct bitcoin (BTC) custody to institutional clients later in 2026. The new platform, called Custody+, folds the asset into the same bank that already holds their stocks and bonds. No specific launch date yet, the bank said. (CoinDesk, The Block)
Custody+ is a suite from Citi Investor Services, announced Tuesday. It bundles custody, settlement, foreign exchange and cash management. Bitcoin comes first. Clients get traditional and crypto custody under one framework instead of routing assets to a separate crypto custodian. The platform also includes real-time asset servicing, instant settlements, liquidity tools, and AI-powered market intelligence, The Block reported.
“Custody+ is the product of a multi-year commitment to building infrastructure that matches the speed of our clients’ strategies,” said Amit Agarwal, head of custody at Citi Investor Services, in a statement. The bank describes the suite as built for markets moving toward continuous trading and shorter settlement cycles.
Citi first disclosed plans for native crypto custody in November 2025, with a 2026 launch in mind. The offering runs on Citi’s common digital asset architecture. It arrives alongside tokenized-deposit capabilities already in use, including near-instantaneous movement of tokenized deposits 24/7 across select Citi markets.
The bank has spent the year widening its digital-asset footprint. In January 2026, Citi began working with Intercontinental Exchange to enable tokenized deposits across its clearinghouses. By July, it had joined a 17-bank Swift pilot for 24/7 cross-border payments using tokenized deposits. Citi is also part of a group of major U.S. banks behind a planned tokenized-deposit network through The Clearing House, targeting launch in the first half of 2027.
On the custody mechanics: Citi’s network serves clients in more than 100 markets and runs its own custody operation in 62 of them. New technology rolled out in the U.S. processes custody-related tasks through a single system. More than 80% of events now flow through in real time. Processing times fell by as much as 92%. And 96% of events are completed within two hours.
Citi is not the first large bank to move here. BNY began offering crypto custody for some U.S. clients in 2022. Fidelity Digital Assets and Coinbase already provide custody to institutions. The field widened after the SEC withdrew SAB 121 in 2025, an accounting policy that had made it costlier for banks to safeguard crypto assets for customers.
BTC traded at $64,741.14 at press time, according to the CoinDesk price widget.
What the announcement does not cover: fees, insurance or loss protections, and which client segments qualify beyond “institutional.” Citi has not named a launch date beyond “later this year.”
