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Key Takeaways
- Clients can trade five assets around the clock through FNB’s Share Saver, Share Builder, Share Investor and Share Zero products, funded directly from their FNB accounts.
- FNB cites security and exchange control compliance for the closed design, so clients get price exposure but no self-custody or withdrawals.
- Discovery Bank struck a similar link with Luno in November 2025, and FNB has not published take-up figures or fee details.
First National Bank, South Africa’s second-largest bank, launched a crypto investing feature on Oct. 6 that lets retail clients buy and sell five digital assets inside its existing share-trading products. Trades start at R10, about $0.60, and run around the clock. The bank built the service with South African exchange VALR.
What Clients Can Trade
The service supports Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Solana and USDT, the dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Tether. FNB offers the assets through its Share Saver, Share Builder, Share Investor and Share Zero products, so clients do not need a separate exchange account. Purchases are funded directly from clients’ FNB accounts.
Reports on the launch say the feature is open to nearly 9 million retail clients. That figure describes the bank’s retail client base, not the number of people who have signed up to trade crypto. FNB has not published a take-up figure.
Sizwe Nxedlana, CEO of FNB and RMB Private Banking and Wealth Management, described the offering as limited and curated. He said clients will have the ability to “trade a set of curated coins.” FNB said it plans to add more assets over time, along with educational content in text, video and audio formats.
A Closed System With No Withdrawals
The main restriction is that crypto bought through FNB stays inside the bank. FNB said the service is ring-fenced within its ecosystem and that assets cannot be transferred in or out. Clients cannot send coins to a personal wallet or another exchange, and they cannot move crypto they already hold into their FNB portfolio.
FNB cited platform security and a conservative approach to compliance and exchange control laws as the reasons. Exchange control rules govern how money and certain assets move across South Africa’s borders, and the bank said the closed design helps it stay within those rules.
“Keeping assets inside a controlled environment lowers the risk that clients send funds to scam wallets or fraudulent platforms.”
The trade-off is that clients get price exposure and the convenience of a familiar banking app, but not self-custody. The assets behave more like a holding in an investment account than like coins in a wallet the client controls. FNB’s announcement did not disclose fees, details of how the assets are held or any limits on trade size beyond the R10 minimum.
Bank Executives Point to Client Demand
Bheki Mkhize, CEO of FNB Wealth and Asset Management, said the bank has seen a lot of activity and interest from clients around crypto. He described the offering as intended to be “a safe and easy way for our customers to access cryptocurrencies.”
The bank’s announcement also pointed to wider acceptance of crypto investing among traditional financial institutions. It noted that regulators are issuing more licenses to financial institutions and that global asset managers such as BlackRock are increasingly offering crypto assets to the public.
Part of a Wider Move by South African Banks
FNB is not the first South African lender to link clients to crypto. Discovery Bank struck a similar arrangement with exchange Luno in November 2025, letting customers link a Luno account to the bank’s app.
More than 6 million South Africans were estimated to hold crypto assets as of late 2025, according to figures cited in reports on the launch, and more than R25 billion in crypto assets sat in custody at major platforms.
For exchanges such as VALR, partnerships of this kind offer access to a customer base far larger than an exchange can usually reach by signing up users one at a time.
