BCB Group is a crypto-dedicated payment services provider, serving many of the industry’s clients including Bitstamp, Crypto.com, Fireblocks, Galaxy, Gemini and Kraken.
It provides payment services in “over 30 currencies, FX, cryptocurrency liquidity, digital asset custody and BLINC, which is BCB’s free, instant settlements network for the BCB client ecosystem.”
Responding to corporate and institutional demand for essential and excellent infrastructure in digital asset markets, BCB Group was “created by payments, digital asset and banking experts.”
Founded in the UK and developed to encompass key relationships across global financial services communities, BCB Group positions itself “as one of the first multi-jurisdictional regulated cryptocurrency service firms.”
Finding a trusted partner: as a firm pushing the boundaries in a nascent industry, BCB Group wanted to “ensure that the fiat leg of the customer journey was underpinned by an experienced partner, one that aligned with its purpose and vision to deliver the best possible payment experience.”
- Building in the same country: BCB Group is based and regulated in the UK and wanted to work with a fully regulated UK bank with international ambitions to work shoulder-to-shoulder with as they scaled.
- Alignment on vision and mission: the firm was mindful that incumbent firms were concerned about working with a digital asset provider. That required finding a banking partner who appreciated the role of digital assets in the evolving payments landscape and had a risk appetite that matched its own.
Seeking a reputable, innovative and secure partner that they can trust – the obvious choice was ClearBank.
Reliability, safety, and security “for BCB Group and its customers were a key priority in the search for a banking partner.”
Collaborating with a fully regulated UK bank “with a scalable solution and a proactive risk approach to digital assets, instilled BCB Group with confidence it had found an ideal banking partner.”
BCB Group was onboarded and fully “integrated into the ClearBank ecosystem in less than 2 months via ClearBank’s single API.”
While BCB Group could have built the integration, the process for “becoming a direct participant is often long and complex.” It also appreciated that approach would “require ongoing capital investment and ongoing maintenance for regulatory testing requirements.”
As a result of the collaboration with ClearBank, BCB Group can “offer its customers all the advantages of FPS in terms of payment speed and security without incurring the significant operational costs of being a direct scheme member.”
BCB Group is utilizing ClearBank’s Virtual GBP Account solution. These virtual accounts are built for flexibility “with the freedom to open millions of accounts, each with its own addressable virtual International Bank Account Number (vIBAN), with no limit on the number of logic layers that BCB can create within their ledger.”