Partners Banka first Czech bank to offer bitcoin in app

Partners Banka, led by Petr Borkovec, has become the first Czech bank to let clients buy and sell bitcoin directly within its mobile app. A crypto account can be opened in minutes, with investing starting from as little as 500 crowns.

“Bitcoin interests a large part of the Czech public today, but for many people the path to buying it remains needlessly complicated,” explains Petr Borkovec, CEO of Partners Banka and co-founder of the Partners financial group of the same name. According to him, the new feature fits into the bank's long-term strategy of creating a single space for a client's entire financial life.

To buy bitcoin, customers no longer need a separate app, registration on an exchange, or the special passwords and recovery codes typical of the classic crypto market. A client simply chooses an amount and confirms the transaction — and the money is debited directly from their bank account. Activating and maintaining the crypto account is free; a fee is charged only on the transaction itself. The service officially launches on August 10.

The technology side — trading and storing bitcoin — is handled by Anycoin, the largest Czech crypto exchange, which this year obtained a license from the Czech National Bank under the European MiCA regulation. Anycoin became the first Czech crypto company to build direct crypto-trading integration into a commercial bank's infrastructure.

The combined buy-and-sell fee will be 2% — the amount by which the deal price will differ from the current price of bitcoin, which now stands at around 1.3 million crowns. Of that, the bank itself keeps 1.5%, while Anycoin takes the remaining 0.5%. There is no fee for storing the coins. The maximum amount for a single purchase is 1.5 million crowns, though the number of transactions is unlimited. For now, it will not be possible to transfer purchased bitcoin outside the bank — to one's own hardware wallet, for instance.

Borkovec himself urges caution: in his view, bitcoin is a risky asset that should make up no more than five percent of a well-diversified investment portfolio, not form its basis. “A banking app can't eliminate bitcoin's price swings or other risks. But it can remove unnecessary technological barriers and give the client better control over how much they buy,” adds the Partners Banka chief, noting that the bank is not yet considering trading in other cryptocurrencies.

Petr Borkovec has long spoken of his ambition to get into cryptocurrency sales — in fact, ever since launching his own bank, with which he intends to compete long-term with, among others, Revolut. Last year, on the Money Maker podcast, he called the European MiCA regulation the key condition that now lets even a regulated bank offer crypto. At the time, he also called bitcoin “a kind of religion” that he himself hasn't succumbed to, but one he believes should be accommodated for clients who want it, provided transparent processes exist for it.

This is already Partners Banka's second notable innovation this year: earlier in the year the bank introduced a free multi-currency account.