Absa Becomes First African Bank to Offer Bitcoin Custody

Absa Group has become the first bank in Africa to offer digital-asset custody, as it looks to tap a local market estimated at about $1.5 billion.

Service for institutional clients

The Johannesburg-headquartered lender will provide safekeeping, administration and transfer services for digital assets to its South African institutional clients.

These include asset managers, non-bank financial institutions and corporates.

Absa received approval from South African regulators for the service, which currently supports bitcoin, XRP Ledger, Ethereum and USDC.

Rob Downes, head of digital assets at Absa’s corporate and investment banking unit, said:

“We expect to extend this to other client segments in South Africa in due course, and are actively working on bringing the solution to some of our other African presence countries in line with regulatory approvals required.”

Bitcoin leads client demand

According to Downes, bitcoin is the predominant asset in custody so far.

The bank is also working with clients to add support for other crypto assets they would like held in South Africa.

Local custody market doubles

The South African Reserve Bank estimates that crypto assets held by the country’s three biggest licensed providers, Luno, VALR and Ovex, more than doubled to R25.3 billion ($1.5 billion) by the end of 2024.

That figure stood at less than R10 billion at the start of 2023.

Globally, the custody market is valued at roughly $953.5 billion in 2026 and is projected to grow to as much as $4.38 trillion by 2033.