The Bank of Russia has added Sberbank, the country's largest lender, to its register of organizations authorized to exchange digital currencies, according to an Interfax report published Monday.

The placement on the register authorizes Sberbank to operate as a crypto exchange participant under Russia's new digital assets regime. It joins eight other organizations already on the list, including state-controlled VTB, Russia's second-largest bank, and T-Invest Lab, part of T-Technologies, the group that also owns online lender T-Bank.

Earlier this month, the CBR had already added Sberbank to its register of digital depositories — entities that maintain records of cryptocurrencies and digital rights. Last month, Sberbank announced it had become the first institution in the country approved to custody bitcoin, receiving CBR clearance for "digital currency record-keeping" and for facilitating transfers of such assets, a permission set that covers bitcoin and other, smaller cryptocurrencies.

"This status will allow the bank to provide services related to organizing the circulation of digital currency on interfaces which clients already use," Sberbank was quoted saying in the report.

What does the authorization change?

For practitioners, the register placement completes a two-step licensing sequence that began with custody. An institution on both registers can hold client crypto assets and execute buy and sell transactions, rather than handing clients off to third-party venues. Sberbank's statement signals it intends to embed those functions in its existing retail interfaces rather than build a standalone product — a distribution decision that puts licensed crypto access in front of its mainstream client base.

The regulatory foundation is a law on digital currencies and digital rights that came into effect on September 1, establishing a comprehensive legal framework for cryptocurrency circulation in Russia. Under the statute, transactions can be conducted through the existing infrastructure of exchanges, brokers and trustees, and now also via crypto exchanges and digital depositories. Cryptocurrency can be bought and sold via crypto exchanges, while rights to the assets are recorded in digital depositories.

Banks and other organizations have been able to apply to the CBR for the corresponding licenses since October 5. Some existing market participants qualify for simplified access and can obtain licenses on a notification basis within one day.

Investor access tiers

The framework splits retail access by investor classification:

• Unqualified investors may buy bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies and stablecoins up to 300,000 rubles per year — roughly $3,556 — through a single intermediary. That ceiling is modest by international retail standards and effectively frames crypto as a capped, controlled allocation rather than an open-ended asset class.
• Qualified investors face no such restriction and gain access to all cryptocurrencies traded on the exchange and over-the-counter markets.

For banks, the tiering matters operationally: onboarding flows must verify investor status before execution, and the per-intermediary limit requires position tracking across the client relationship.

December as the launch window

Sberbank plans to debut its crypto wallet in December, the same month the Moscow Exchange will launch crypto trading. The convergence of the country's largest bank and its primary exchange venue in a single month marks the point at which Russia's regulatory framework moves from licensing to live market infrastructure.

For institutional observers, the sequence to watch is whether the December launches translate into sustained volume under the unqualified-investor cap — and whether additional banks follow Sberbank through the dual-register path in the first quarter of the new regime.