Today crypto bank SEBA announced that St. Galler Kantonalbank (SGKB) has gone live using SEBA services to offer digital asset custody and brokerage to its clients. SEBA landed its first banking client, Julius Baer, in 2019. The major Swiss private bank was also one of SEBA’s biggest early backers.
Initially SGKB is offering trading and custody services for Bitcoin and Ethereum to a subset of clients, but plans to expand based on demand.
“Thanks to our cooperation with SEBA Bank, we’ve implemented a straightforward initial setup, which allows us to learn and grow well aligned to our clients’ needs,” said Falk Kohlmann, Head of Market Services at St.Galler Kantonalbank.
Landing Julius Baer as its first lighthouse client was a big deal in 2019. However, SEBA doesn’t mention how many banking clients it has in total, only naming three, with the third being LGT Bank Liechtenstein. In contrast, its competitor digital asset bank Sygnum has 15 banking clients, including PostFinance, the Swiss post office.
On top of that, SEBA has secured almost double the funds raised by Sygnum. In late 2018, SEBA raised CHF 100 million, but within a year it was looking to raise another CHF 100 million ($110m). Given the 2019/20 crypto winter it only managed CHF 20 million ($22m) for its Series B. Around the same time, there were also major staff changes, including the departure of the COO, CTO and chairman. The latter, Andreas Amschwand, was also a Julius Baer board member.
However, by early 2022, just after the next cycle peak, it landed another CHF 110 million ($121m) in backing, bringing total funds raised to CHF 230 million ($253m). Shortly afterwards, the CEO stepped down and was replaced by Franz Bergmüller.
