BitGo Bank & Trust and InvestiFi have announced a partnership aimed at expanding digital asset investing services for U.S. banks and credit unions, positioning the collaboration as a nationwide rollout across all 50 states. The initiative will be powered by BitGo’s Crypto-as-a-Service (CaaS) infrastructure, allowing InvestiFi’s network of financial institutions to offer crypto trading directly through existing customer accounts.
The announcement signals a continued push by regulated digital asset firms to embed crypto services into traditional banking channels, particularly community banks and credit unions that have historically been slower to adopt digital asset products due to compliance and custody concerns.
Rather than forcing consumers to move funds into external crypto exchanges, the partnership is designed to keep digital asset activity inside the banking relationship. That approach reflects a broader industry shift: crypto adoption is increasingly being framed not as a speculative add-on, but as a retention and product-expansion strategy for smaller financial institutions competing against national banks and fintech apps.
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What does the BitGo-InvestiFi partnership actually enable?
Under the agreement, InvestiFi will integrate BitGo’s infrastructure to provide digital asset trading functionality to its network of partner banks and credit unions. Customers will be able to access crypto trading from their existing InvestiFi-linked accounts, reducing friction compared with traditional exchange onboarding processes.
The technical foundation is BitGo’s Crypto-as-a-Service model, which provides custody and API-driven backend infrastructure designed for institutions that want exposure to crypto services without building internal digital asset custody or settlement capabilities from scratch.
This type of embedded trading is becoming a key battleground in the U.S. market. While major exchanges dominate retail volume, community banks and credit unions are looking for ways to stop deposits from leaving their balance sheets. Allowing customers to trade digital assets within their current banking interface could reduce leakage to crypto-native competitors and strengthen cross-selling opportunities.
Takeaway
Why does BitGo’s OCC-regulated status matter here?
BitGo is positioning its OCC-supervised trust bank structure as a key differentiator, particularly in an environment where regulatory uncertainty remains one of the largest barriers for banks entering digital assets. The company notes that BitGo Bank & Trust is a federally chartered trust bank, which provides a framework that more closely resembles traditional fiduciary custody models.
For banks and credit unions, custody is the central risk point. Unlike brokerage-style investing, crypto introduces unique operational challenges including private key management, asset segregation, transaction security, and compliance reporting. By leaning on a regulated custodian, smaller institutions may be able to offer crypto products without taking on the full operational burden internally.
The announcement also highlights “complex jurisdictions” such as New York, Texas, and Idaho—suggesting that licensing and regulatory coverage remains uneven across the U.S. market. Nationwide compliance is not a trivial selling point, especially for credit unions that operate across multiple states or serve customers who relocate frequently.
Takeaway
How could this reshape competition between banks, fintechs, and exchanges?
The partnership reflects an important strategic trend: crypto trading is gradually being pulled away from standalone exchanges and into traditional financial distribution channels. If credit unions and community banks can offer digital assets directly through deposit-linked investing tools, retail crypto participation may increasingly resemble stock and ETF investing rather than exchange-based speculation.
InvestiFi’s focus on enabling trading “to and from deposit accounts” is particularly notable. For community financial institutions, keeping deposits is a core business priority. If customers can move funds into crypto without leaving the bank’s ecosystem, that activity becomes a retention lever instead of an outflow risk.
However, the long-term success of these models will depend on user experience, token availability, spreads, and the ability to offer advanced products like recurring buys, staking, or stablecoin yield features—areas where exchanges still dominate. Traditional institutions also face reputational risk if retail customers experience losses, which may limit how aggressively banks market crypto services even when the infrastructure is available.