Vast Bank exits cryptocurrency market, closes crypto banking mobile app
Oklahoma, US-based Vast Bank is exiting the cryptocurrency market and has closed down its crypto mobile banking app.
Vast Bank closes crypto app
Launched in 2021, the app enabled the bank’s customers to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency through partnerships with German software firm SAP and crypto exchange Coinbase.
Upon the launch, Vast Bank claimed it had become the first bank in the US “to offer customers the ability to purchase and sell cryptocurrencies alongside a traditional checking account”.
However, in a notice on its website, Vast Bank now writes: “To strategically align our operations, effective Wednesday January 31st, 2024, we will be disabling and removing the Vast Crypto Mobile Banking application from Google and Apple, which means your Vast Crypto Mobile Banking account(s), including any Digital Assets held in custody, will be liquidated and closed.”
The bank adds that anyone who had their account closed before removing their funds “will have a cashier’s check mailed to their address on file”.
The closure of the app follows a consent order from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) signed by Vast in October of last year, in which the OCC claimed that the bank engaged in “unsafe or unsound practices, including those relating to capital ratios, capital and strategic planning, project management, books and records, liquidity risk management; interest rate risk management, information technology controls, risk management for new products, and custody account controls”.
The order required the bank to submit “an acceptable revised written capital and strategic plan” covering at least the next three years and to implement a compliance committee.
According to a report by American Banker, in an interview with local news station News on 6, Vast Bank’s chief executive, Tom Biolchini, says that the OCC order was “directed towards our cryptocurrency play”, adding that it was a “strategic decision” to exit the crypto market and emphasising the importance of separating “cryptocurrency from the community banking that is Vast Bank”.
