Sberbank Wins Crypto License: Bitcoin Access for 110M

The Bank of Russia has added Sberbank, the country's largest lender, to its register of licensed cryptocurrency exchange providers, clearing the bank to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether's USDT with its own money and in its own name. Paired with a custody license Sberbank secured earlier in October, the bank now holds both permissions Russia's new crypto framework requires, putting it on track to bring crypto trading into apps used by roughly 110 million retail customers.

What the Bank of Russia actually approved

Interfax broke the news of the exchange registration, which FinanceFeeds dated to October 12; the underlying fact is that the central bank formally listed Sberbank as a licensed cryptocurrency exchange provider. That came days after a separate approval: Sberbank had separately secured a spot on the digital-depository list days earlier, a status tied to recording and safeguarding clients' crypto holdings. The two licenses serve different functions. FinanceFeeds explained the distinction this way: one registration covers record-keeping of who owns what and how assets move between holders, while the other covers dealing in the asset itself — so Sberbank can now both hold client crypto on its own books and execute trades directly, instead of routing customer orders through an outside venue.

The roster of licensed firms has expanded quickly since early October. According to FinanceFeeds, when the Bank of Russia published its very first registers on October 7, only four firms held exchange licenses and five held custodian status, and Sberbank was not yet among the exchange operators. Once Sberbank's exchange license came through, FinanceFeeds put the exchange-operator count at nine. By the next day, Cointelegraph reported a further increase, with an updated register showing ten licensed exchange operators and six custodians, roughly double the four and five on the list a week before. Other large institutions appear alongside Sberbank: Cointelegraph noted that VTB, Russia's second-biggest bank, as well as non-bank firms like T-Invest Lab, also hold spots on the registers.

Sberbank has told reporters it intends to launch retail crypto products on December 1. Cointelegraph reported the bank's plan to roll out Bitcoin, Ether and USDt trading starting December 1, 2026, across its SberBank Online, SberInvestments and SberBusiness platforms, and said the bank had already begun internal testing of crypto buying, selling, depositing and withdrawing inside the SberBank Online app, citing a Vedomosti report sourced to the bank's press office. That date is not guaranteed: Decrypt reported that Sberbank itself has qualified the December 1 target, saying it depends on further decisions from the central bank, a caveat Cointelegraph's reporting echoed.

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What the two approvals do and don't mean for Russian customers

Holding both licenses lets Sberbank handle a customer's crypto purchase, custody and sale entirely inside its own systems instead of depending on a separate exchange or depository. That is an operational change for a bank with Sberbank's reach, but it does not make crypto unrestricted in Russia. The underlying law, which President Vladimir Putin signed and which The Block covered, establishes rules for exchanges, custodians, brokers and clearing houses but keeps intact a prohibition on using crypto as payment for goods or services inside the country. Decrypt's reporting on the Sberbank approval made the consumer implication explicit: crypto still cannot legally be spent inside Russia, so customers will be able to buy Bitcoin through Sberbank but not use it to pay for anything.

The law also limits how much an ordinary retail investor can buy. The Block reported that anyone who has not cleared a required knowledge test is restricted to purchases of 300,000 rubles, about $3,700, per year at each licensed intermediary they use. Because that ceiling applies per intermediary rather than as one nationwide total, a customer who holds accounts at Sberbank and another licensed broker could in theory buy up to that amount through each — though The Block flagged that its source report did not identify exactly which cryptocurrencies would be counted against the limit. Investors who pass the knowledge test can trade above this cap, but none of the sources reviewed describe how that tier would work inside Sberbank's own product.

Why regulators are acting now

The approval marks a reversal from Russia's earlier stance. Decrypt's reporting recalled that back in January 2022 the central bank had instead pushed to ban crypto trading, mining and exchanges altogether, on financial-stability grounds, and observed that barely five years on, the same regulator is now licensing the nation's largest lender to run a crypto trading desk. The current framework traces to a law that, per Cointelegraph, came into force on September 1 and brought exchange operators and custodians under Bank of Russia supervision for the first time. FinanceFeeds reported the regulator has kept pace with its own stated goal, noting officials said in September a working regulated market could exist before year-end 2026, and the registration pace since has tracked that target.

What remains unresolved before December 1

Several questions sit between this approval and an actual product in customers' hands. Sberbank's own December 1 target is explicitly conditional on further Bank of Russia rulemaking, according to both Decrypt and Cointelegraph, so the date could slip. None of the reporting reviewed here specifies pricing, fees, leverage availability, or which coins beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT will be offered at launch, and none estimates how many of Sberbank's 110 million retail customers are expected to actually use the service. Readers should treat December 1 as a company target rather than a confirmed go-live date, and watch for further Bank of Russia registry updates and a formal Sberbank product announcement closer to that date.