Citigroup and Coinbase have expanded their partnership with two initiatives that let Citi's institutional clients accept stablecoin payments and give Coinbase bank-account-like functionality through Citi's Virtual Account Wallet. The move builds on a collaboration the two companies first announced in October 2025 and comes as Citi pushes further into custody and tokenization services.
Citigroup has deepened its collaboration with Coinbase, tapping the exchange's infrastructure to help corporate clients accept stablecoin payments as the bank builds out payments, custody and tokenization services, according to a Wall Street Journal report cited by U.Today.
Two initiatives launch first in the US
Under the expanded deal, Coinbase selected Citi's Virtual Account Wallet solution to power Coinbase Virtual Accounts, giving Coinbase's payments customers bank-account-like functionality with incoming fiat currency automatically converted into a stablecoin. A second initiative lets Citi's institutional clients accept stablecoin payments through Spring by Citi, the bank's payment acceptance platform, with Coinbase Payments powering the acceptance and converting funds back to fiat automatically. Both initiatives will launch first in the United States, and the two companies said they will keep expanding the collaboration in the coming months.
According to Citi: "a pivotal step in our ongoing Services strategy to provide optionality for our clients", said Shahmir Khaliq, the bank's Head of Services.
Building on a broader digital-asset push
This is not the companies' first tie-up. Citi and Coinbase first announced a broader digital-asset payments collaboration in October 2025, focused on infrastructure that let institutional users move between traditional currencies and digital assets and on exploring alternative fiat-to-stablecoin conversion. However, neither the Wall Street Journal report nor Citi has specified which stablecoins or blockchain networks the new initiatives will support.
Citi has laid out four pillars for its digital-asset business: expanding Citi Token Services, improving interoperability, developing crypto custody and tokenization services, and providing banking infrastructure to virtual-asset service providers. In August, the bank unveiled its Custody+ platform and confirmed plans to launch custody for native digital assets before the end of 2026, starting with Bitcoin. Citi has also moved deeper into tokenized securities: in June it launched Digital Depositary Receipts representing shares in private companies, using regulated blockchain infrastructure operated by SIX while Citi acts as both issuer and custodian. More recently, Citi became the first U.S. bank to process live native transactions on Swift's blockchain-based ledger.
Sources: U.Today, Investing.com
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