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Israel’s Largest Bank Will Give Bitcoin Trading Another Try

Bank Leumi and Galaxy Digital said Thursday they'll bring cryptocurrency trading to Israel's largest bank through its digital investment arm, Pepper.

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In brief

Bank Leumi, Israel's largest bank, will let customers trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana inside Leumi Trade through Galaxy's trading and custody rails.
It's Bank Leumi's second attempt at crypto trading, after a failed run back in 2022.
The target is early 2027, still subject to Bank of Israel approval—the same gate that killed Leumi's 2022 Paxos plan.

Bank Leumi and Galaxy Digital said Thursday they'll bring cryptocurrency trading to Israel's largest bank through its digital investment arm, Pepper.

“Customers of Leumi and PEPPER, the bank's mobile digital banking arm, will be able to buy, hold and sell selected digital assets, including Bitcoin, Ether and Solana, within the Leumi Trade capital markets application,” an official press release says. “Trading will take place in a dedicated, secured section of the app. The service is expected to become available to customers in early 2027.”

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It isn't Leumi's first swing. In March 2022, Pepper Invest said it would enable BTC and ETH trading through crypto infrastructure and tokenization company Paxos, also billing itself the first Israeli bank to do so. That service never launched, because the necessary regulatory sign-off never came. Back in 2022 there was a plan to provide similar services, but the deal stalled at the Bank of Israel.

Why the second attempt looks different

Up until this summer, Israeli banks auto-delayed crypto-linked deposits and could refuse fiat from crypto sources outright, and licensed firms could only trade a short list of coins with no clear custody-capital rules.

That changed in mid-2026 when the Bank of Israel removed the deposit delays and barred blanket refusals of funds from licensed providers, the Capital Market Authority set wallet-security and capital standards (2 million New Israeli Shekels for non-custody firms, 2.5 million New Israeli Shekels with custody, plus mandatory customer-asset segregation), and an August 1 circular opened trading to the top 50 coins by market cap above a $500 million threshold—which means a regulated, lower-friction on-ramp now exists for banks like Leumi to bring crypto directly to retail customers.

Galaxy also holds a New York DFS BitLicense, the state's crypto business license, and a money-transmission license from May 2026, giving Leumi a regulated counterparty.

Galaxy supplies both halves of the stack. Execution flows through GalaxyOne Institutional, its platform built for banks and asset managers, and custody runs on GK8, an air-gapped wallet maker (one that never touches the internet) that Galaxy acquired after Celsius's collapse.

You'll trade from the same app where you already manage stocks and bonds. The bank serves roughly 2.5 million retail customers.

"The future of finance will run on open, programmable rails, and we believe the banks that move first will define the era that follows," said Lior Lamesh, CEO of Galaxy Israel. "Leumi is the first bank in Israel to bring digital assets to its customers, and it chose Galaxy, to make it possible."

Leumi and Galaxy expect the service inside Leumi Trade in early 2027, pending Bank of Israel sign-off. The same gate that stopped the 2022 plan.

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