Alfa-Bank, Russia’s largest private bank, plans to launch its own digital depository and offer clients a full range of cryptocurrency services once the country’s digital asset regulation takes effect, Dmitry Vitman, chief operating officer of Alfa-Bank’s corporate and investment banking business, according to RBC Investments. The plan would make Alfa-Bank a custody provider for the wider market rather than only its own clients, and it hinges on regulation that Russia is still finalizing.
Russia has set September 1 as the start date for crypto regulation, moving the timeline back from an earlier July 1, 2026 target, and First Deputy Central Bank Chairman Vladimir Chistyukhin expects the regulations needed for the first legal transactions to be published by November. The draft law cleared its first reading in the State Duma, establishing crypto exchanges and digital depositories as new professional participants, with depositories that already hold a depository license exempt from obtaining a separate one from the central bank.
Depository Comes First for Alfa-Bank
Vitman framed custody as the starting point for everything that follows, saying the bank plans “to create our own digital depository and offer its services to other companies.” Retail brokerage would develop first across Russian and international rails, potentially launching in late 2026 or early 2027 if the digital currency law takes force in September 2026.
The bank does not expect meaningful liquidity or volumes in Russia’s crypto market before late 2027, and Vitman tied the wider rollout to the pace at which regulators publish the final rules, expecting the market to build gradually rather than arrive fully formed.
Alfa-Bank also plans to create Russian investment instruments on open blockchains that could draw foreign investors, part of an effort to keep capital on domestic infrastructure. Vitman argued that Russia needs competitive products of its own, warning the market would otherwise have little to offer international participants.
“It’s important for Russia to develop its own instruments, otherwise we’ll have nothing to offer. We need to attract investors to our infrastructure, so we need to create products that can compete globally.”
Rivals Build Their Own Depositories
Alfa-Bank moves alongside the country’s other large lenders, with Sberbank preparing a crypto wallet and a digital depository by December 1 and planning authorized crypto transactions inside its Sber and SberInvestments apps. T-Technologies, which controls T-Bank, plans a depository on its Atomize digital financial asset platform and crypto sales through its T-Investments broker, while VTB intends to build its own depository for storing and recording digital assets inside Russia.
The Moscow Exchange expects to run its first crypto transactions by the end of 2026, rounding out a bank-led market that Russia has oriented toward cross-border trade rather than domestic payments, which remain banned. Beyond the core legislation, the Bank of Russia is weighing a plan to let banks and brokers run crypto exchanges through a simplified notification process, while a separate framework caps non-qualified investors at 300,000 rubles a year.
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