Customers Bank, the $19.1 billion subsidiary of Customers Bancorp, Inc. has released a partial list of inaugural institutional crypto clients.

The clients identified are among the premier cryptocurrency and digital asset institutions, making the bank one of the nation’s leading financial services providers in the growing global crypto industry.

“We’re proud to be attracting these best-in-class organizations,” said Sam Sidhu, President & CEO of Customers Bank, “and are confident that we can provide the much-demanded fiat currency ‘on and off ramp’ for institutional clients in the crypto ecosystem,” He explained, “Customers Bank is concentrating on agents making key institutional B2B transactions.”

Customers Bank has already onboarded key exchanges, OTC desks, funds, liquidity providers, and other enterprise-grade businesses in the crypto ecosystem.

The bank announced its first clients including Genesis Global Trading, a leading digital currency prime brokerage, Blockfills with a digital asset trading platform already serving over 600 institutional clients across 50 countries, GSR a global leader in digital asset trading executing over 1 million trades daily, and SFOX, one of the largest crypto meta-exchanges providing the deepest price discovery, optimal execution, and institutional trading prime services.

Customers Bank is using its own branded CBIT^TM token to convey U.S. dollars between commercial banking customers. The CBIT^TM token is used in conjunction with the TassatPay^TM payments platform to effect blockchain-backed, real-time instant B2B payments between two Customers Bank clients.

While clients benefit from improved capital efficiency due to the speed and security of real-time blockchain transactions, the bank will enjoy the benefit of significant low-cost deposits providing tremendous liquidity and expanded net interest margins to fuel aggressive lending growth.

“We are excited to see more banks embracing our continually evolving industry,” said Michael Moro, CEO of Genesis. “Customers Bank’s commitment to providing valuable services to the crypto community is a welcome development.”

“The platform offered by Customers Bank fits with our vision, based on decades of experience in institutional trading, that there must be a bank partner and connection to traditional industries that can benefit from crypto-based transactions,” said Nick Hammer, co-founder and CEO of Blockfills.

Customers Bank has over the past year transformed itself from a Mid-Atlantic-based community bank to a digital-forward financial services institution by partnering with best-in-class fintechs partners.

“As the trading needs of institutional investors in digital assets become increasingly sophisticated, we need a partner to provide strong risk management capabilities and a crypto-friendly outlook,” said Trey Griggs, CEO of GSR USA. “Customers Bank is the ideal partner for us as we look to increase investor confidence and participation in the digital asset market given their extensive experience as a well-established, commercial bank.”

Christopher Smalley, Head of Digital Banking at Customers said, “These initial four partners are uniquely positioned in the cryptocurrency ecosystem to attract additional customers to our full-service banking platform.”

Prospective institutional crypto customers can reach Customers Bank for more information here.

Sidhu believes that the number of cryptocurrency/digital asset clients and the volume of transactions will grow exponentially in the months ahead. And this is just the first of many industry verticals that will be served, he says.

“We see very beneficial applications for real-time B2B payments options in commercial real estate, healthcare, hospitality, insurance, accounting, alternative energy, and manufacturing supply chains. We believe the demand for our technology will grow and expand. Moreover, the payments system will create cross-sell opportunities as the enhanced profitability of users prompts them to borrow capital for expansion and growth,” he says.

Akbar Thobhani, CEO & Co-Founder at SFOX commented, “SFOX works with many leading and emerging institutions in the crypto market, and we are excited to partner with Customers Bank, one of the most forward-thinking banks, to provide these institutions a trusted end-to-end solution that grants access to global crypto markets from a single account.”

The bank announced $1.5 billion of zero-cost deposits from the crypto business in its Q3 earnings report issued October 28. Sidhu said CUBI will report further on the adoption and success of its real-time payments service starting with 2022 earnings reports.

Read more about Customers Bank cryptocurrency here.