FNB now lets customers buy, sell and hold five crypto assets inside its banking app. Johannesburg exchange VALR supplies the trading infrastructure behind the product. Purchased crypto cannot
South Africa’s First National Bank, the retail arm of banking group FirstRand and known locally as FNB, launched FNB Crypto Investing on October 6, a service that places Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Solana and Tether’s USDT inside the same share-trading accounts its customers already use for equities, with Johannesburg-based exchange VALR handling the trading behind it. The bank has a retail base of close to 9 million customers, the largest retail customer base any South African bank has opened to crypto trading so far. The minimum order is R10 and the market stays open around the clock.
Available at launch:Bitcoin (BTC)Ether (ETH)XRPSolana (SOL)Tether (USDT)Customers reach the product through the FNB app, under the Share Saver, Share Builder, Share Investor and Share Zero accounts. FNB did not build a separate crypto wallet or send users to an outside exchange through a referral link. A client who already owns JSE-listed shares through the bank sees crypto holdings next to them and funds purchases from the same rand balance.
Sizwe Nxedlana, chief executive of FNB and RMB Private Banking and Wealth Management, said customers had been asking for alternative investments and described crypto as one more asset class for widening a portfolio. Bheki Mkhize, who runs FNB Wealth and Asset Management, said the bank had “observed a lot of activity and interest from our clients around crypto” and that clients want a trusted platform for it.
The service is closed at both ends. Customers cannot bring in coins from an external wallet, and they cannot move what they buy into self-custody. FNB cites security and a conservative reading of compliance and exchange-control rules as the reasons.
What customers can do ✓ Buy and sell at any hour, any day ✓ Start with an order of R10 ✓ Fund purchases from a rand balance ✓ Hold crypto next to listed shares What stays blocked ✗ Deposits from an external wallet ✗ Withdrawals to self-custody ✗ Sending USDT to another person ✗ Using coins on other platformsThe mechanism behind that caution is South Africa’s capital-control regime. A token sent to a private wallet can leave the country within minutes, without passing through the reporting channels that apply to rand moving abroad. Each such transfer would require the bank to answer for the destination of the funds under anti-money-laundering and exchange-control obligations. Keeping every coin on an internal ledger removes that question entirely.
Clients get price exposure and the ability to trade, with no way to use the asset on a blockchain. That matters most for USDT: a customer can hold the dollar-pegged token as a rand hedge, yet cannot send it to pay anyone or use it on another platform.
VALR was founded in Johannesburg in 2018 and says it serves more than 1.6 million users and about 1,800 corporate and institutional clients, with Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures among its backers. For a bank, the regulatory status counts for more than the size. VALR holds a Financial Services Provider licence from the Financial Sector Conduct Authority and is registered as an accountable institution with the Financial Intelligence Centre.
South Africa classifies crypto assets as financial products, and the South African Reserve Bank counted 310 licensed crypto asset service providers at the end of March 2026. That licensing regime allows a lender to treat an exchange as a regulated counterparty.
Estimates of how many South Africans own crypto range from 6 million to around 8 million, the higher figure coming from a Reserve Bank stocktake that showed crypto trading accounts nearly doubling since early 2022. The Reserve Bank put assets held at the three largest local platforms at R25.3 billion at the end of 2024, up from less than R10 billion at the start of 2023.
Chainalysis found that Bitcoin accounted for about 74% of rand purchases of crypto in its dataset. XRP and Ether were more heavily represented in South Africa than in comparable markets, which the firm says may point to a more investment-focused user base. FNB’s five assets include all three. Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole received more than $205 billion in on-chain value between July 2024 and June 2025, and South Africa ranked second in the region behind Nigeria, whose $92.1 billion was nearly three times larger. Those figures come from the 2025 edition of the firm’s regional study. Chainalysis began publishing its 2026 chapters in late September and has not yet released the one covering Sub-Saharan Africa at the time of writing.
Stablecoins earn their place on the list through volume. The Reserve Bank recorded almost R27 billion in USDT transactions across three domestic exchanges in the year to 30 April 2026.
Three large lenders moved before FNB. Absa partnered with Ripple in October 2025 to build custody for institutional clients, becoming Ripple’s first major custody partner in Africa. The service went live on September 21, 2026, for institutional clients only. Discovery Bank announced its Luno partnership in November 2025, becoming the first South African bank to put crypto trading in its app, and by May 2026 its customers could open a Luno account without leaving the Discovery app.
Nedbank’s agreement with Crypto.com, announced in March 2026, is aimed at payments. The two companies are building conversion between the rand and USDC, along with blockchain settlement for cross-border trade and remittances, including daily net settlement between themselves.
For local exchanges, the main consequence is that a newcomer no longer needs to register with them at all. A client who wants Bitcoin exposure can now get it from the bank that already holds their salary and shares. VALR gains that order flow through FNB; rivals without a banking partner do not.
Whether the wallet restriction lasts depends on rules still in draft. National Treasury and the Reserve Bank published a draft Crypto Assets Manual in August, covering how cross-border crypto transactions fit within exchange control. The Reserve Bank stressed that the framework does not make crypto legal tender. The comment period closed on September 30 and no final version has been published. FNB has signalled it will not stay closed indefinitely: Sebastian Pillay, head of share investing at FNB Wealth and Investments, said this week that the bank plans to add more cryptocurrencies and enable transfers.
VALR’s role also extends past retail trading. Since September 2025 it has been one of three African distributors of RLUSD, Ripple’s dollar stablecoin, which had a market capitalisation above $700 million at that point. Ripple added to its African footprint in June 2026 with a strategic investment in payments company Flutterwave, which plans to integrate RLUSD and XRP Ledger infrastructure into its network.
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