Israel's largest bank partners with Galaxy for crypto trading by 2027, but a similar attempt in 2022 stalled over Bank of Israel approval that has not yet arrived.
Alpha Score of 49 reflects weak overall profile with strong momentum, poor value, moderate quality. Based on 3 of 4 signals – score is capped at 90 until remaining data ingests.
Bank Leumi, Israel's largest bank, plans to let retail customers buy and sell Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana inside its Leumi Trade app by early 2027. Galaxy Digital will supply the trading and custody infrastructure. The service still needs the Bank of Israel's sign-off.
The announcement arrived Thursday. Leumi and its mobile-only arm PEPPER will direct users to a dedicated section of the Leumi Trade app where a short list of tokens can be bought, sold, and held long-term, Galaxy said in a press release. Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Solana (SOL) lead the list. Other “selected” coins will follow.
Galaxy Digital (Nasdaq: GLXY) is providing the backbone through GalaxyOne Institutional, its platform for banks and asset managers. Leumi also signed on to Galaxy's custody arm, the former Israeli security company GK8, to hold private keys and safeguard customer assets. Galaxy said the arrangement makes Leumi the first Israeli bank to expose its customers to digital assets.
The risk is one that Leumi has seen before. Its investment unit Pepper Invest announced in March 2022 that it would open BTC and ETH trading through Paxos, claiming to be the first in Israel to do so. That service never went live. The plan stalled because the regulatory approval it depended on never arrived from the Bank of Israel, according to reports at the time.
The 2027 target for the new iteration carries the same asterisk. The same regulator that blocked the Paxos effort has not yet given a go-ahead for this one. Leumi believes the current environment is better than 2022, the bank said in its announcement.
Israel's rules on bank exposure to crypto were hostile by design until recently. Banks could automatically block crypto-linked deposits and refuse fiat traced to crypto sources. Licensed trading firms could work with only a narrow list of coins.
That structure has loosened over the past year. The Bank of Israel scrapped automatic deposit delays and blocked banks from issuing blanket refusals of money from licensed providers. The Capital Market Authority set minimum capital requirements – 2 million shekels for firms without custody, 2.5 million shekels for those holding customer assets – plus a segregation requirement for client funds.
A circular released August 1 expanded the allowed trading list to the 50 largest coins by market value, provided each sits above a $500 million cap. Together these moves give banks like Leumi a regulated platform that did not exist three years ago, Maya Ravia, the bank's Head of Strategy, said in the announcement. She called the initiative “simple, secure and regulated access to trading digital assets.”
Lior Lamesh, CEO of Galaxy Israel, said the firm is “building one platform for trading and custody” for banks.
Israel saw an estimated $22 billion in on-chain crypto value from June 2024 to June 2025, Chainalysis figures show. Across the wider Middle East and North Africa, on-chain activity rose 33% year over year to more than $500 billion.
Leumi, founded more than 120 years ago and operating without a controlling shareholder, has not disclosed a specific date when regulatory approval might land. The Bank of Israel's next public meeting on digital asset rules has not been scheduled.
Drafted by a large language model from the source reporting linked above, then screened by automated publishing checks. It is not read by a journalist before publication. Some articles cite our Alpha Score. Verify prices and figures against the original source. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.