Israel’s Bank Leumi to Offer Bitcoin, Ether and Solana Trading Through Galaxy Partnership Starting 2027
In a country where an earlier attempt to open Bitcoin trading to retail customers quietly died on a regulator’s desk, Israel’s oldest and largest bank is trying again — this time with a bigger partner and, it hopes, better timing.
Bank Leumi has agreed to work with Galaxy Digital to bring cryptocurrency trading directly into the bank’s own investment infrastructure, with the service expected to go live for customers in early 2027. Once launched, clients of Leumi and its mobile banking arm, Pepper, will be able to buy, hold, and sell Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana from inside the Leumi Trade app, alongside the stocks and funds they already manage there. The bank has said it may add other digital assets later, though a full list has not been published.
The mechanics of the deal lean heavily on Galaxy. Leumi is adopting GalaxyOne Institutional, Galaxy’s trading platform built for banks and asset managers, while custody will run through Galaxy’s infrastructure formerly known as GK8. That combination is meant to let the bank offer crypto exposure without building the custody and execution stack itself — a path several traditional banks entering digital assets have followed rather than reinvent.
Galaxy Israel’s chief executive, Lior Lamesh, framed the tie-up in broader terms than a single product launch, saying the future of finance will run on open, programmable rails and that the banks that move first will define the era that follows.
Scale is part of what makes this notable. Bank Leumi and Pepper together serve roughly 2.5 million clients, meaning a working rollout would hand a large slice of Israel’s banked population a regulated, in-app path into crypto rather than routing them through a separate exchange. Leumi is also billing itself as the first Israeli bank to reach this stage of offering digital asset trading directly.
None of it is guaranteed yet. The service still needs sign-off from the Bank of Israel, and Leumi has been here before: an earlier plan announced back in 2022, which would have let customers trade Bitcoin and Ether through Paxos for as little as 50 shekels, never made it past the regulator and was quietly shelved. Whether the current attempt fares differently will depend on how Israeli banking regulation has shifted since then, and how quickly the Bank of Israel is willing to move.
Below is a post from Galaxy discussing the partnership.
Trading cryptocurrencies through any platform, including bank-integrated ones, carries risk — prices are volatile and regulatory approval for services like this one is not guaranteed until it is formally granted. This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Readers new to how Bitcoin custody and trading actually work can start with coin680’s Bitcoin Academy.