Austria’s Bitpanda targets UAE growth after RAK Bank deal

• Bitpanda in talks across UAE
• Deal in place with RAK Bank
• More institutional growth expected

Austrian cryptocurrency trading company Bitpanda is in talks with banks across the UAE to offer crypto brokerage services, building on an earlier deal with Ras Al Khaimah’s RAK Bank. 

Analysts say institutional adoption, rather than retail speculation, will drive the next phase of digital asset growth in the Gulf.

Vienna-based Bitpanda is Austria’s first tech unicorn — a startup valued at more than $1 billion that is not listed on an exchange. It entered the UAE market in July through its partnership with RAK Bank.

The deal made RAK the first conventional UAE bank to offer retail customers access to a crypto exchange via its mobile app, giving Bitpanda an early foothold in the market.

“We are having active discussions with other banks,” Jessica Wu, head of Apac for Bitpanda, told AGBI, on the sidelines of Abu Dhabi Finance Week, but did not name the banks involved.

The UAE has a comprehensive crypto regulatory regime. Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority, Abu Dhabi Global Market and the central bank now license and supervise exchanges, custodians and other crypto businesses.

A federal law passed in 2025 extended oversight to stablecoins, tokenised assets and decentralised finance, requiring all firms to be licenced by September 2026.

“The regulator here is very forward thinking and welcoming. This is definitely a hub for us to develop further,” said Wu.

Bitpanda’s institutional arm, Bitpanda Technology Solutions, counts European lenders including Deutsche Bank, Raiffeisen Bank and N26 – a multinational German fintech and neobank company based in Berlin – among its clients.

“The next cycle of crypto is no longer about trading, about the hype or the meme coins; it’s about equipping institutions to enter the space under the right compliance,” said Wu.

US bank JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon has long been one of crypto’s fiercest critics, dismissing Bitcoin as “worthless”, a “fraud” and memorably “rat poison squared”, even as the bank he leads has become a key builder of the infrastructure supporting institutional adoption of digital assets.

As well as JP Morgan, asset managers including BlackRock and Franklin Templeton are rolling out regulated products, custody services and trading rails that allow digital assets to sit alongside traditional portfolios.

Richard Teng, chief executive of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, said institutional onboarding within his organisation has doubled for two consecutive years. Lucy Gazmararian, founder of crypto-focused venture fund Token Bay Capital, said 2025 marks a turning point for the sector as regulatory clarity, particularly in the US, opens the door for large asset managers to expand offerings.

Speaking at the Binance Blockchain event in Dubai earlier this month, she said: “I don’t think it has sunk into the broad mainstream consciousness how significant that is in terms of turning this entire industry into tens of trillions of dollars from the few trillion dollars that we sit on today.”

US president Donald Trump has reversed his country’s previously hostile stance, set under Joe Biden, and ordered regulators to build a unified federal framework aimed at making the US “the crypto capital of the world”.

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The 2025 Genius Act, the country’s first federal stablecoin law, gave clear rules for dollar-pegged tokens, while a reorientated Securities and Exchange Commission and a series of high-profile industry summits have further signalled Washington’s pivot toward nurturing the sector.

But there remain concerns that the industry could become over-regulated. 

Andrej Majcen, CEO of Bitcoin Suisse, said: “Crypto and blockchain technology is all about decentralisation, but now you start with a lot of centralisation with the large institutions. That of course goes a little bit against the original ethos of the sector. But at the end of the day, what we have been advocating for since 2013 is adoption of the industry and now we talk about mass adoption.”

The Swiss crypto financial service provider received in-principle approval from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Markets earlier this year and Majcen expects to receive the full licence, allowing it to provide regulated crypto financial services, in the first half of 2026.