DatabaseServicesArticlesNewsletterRequest listing
← Back to database
Bitwala

Bitwala

🇩🇪 Germany
bitwala.com
Digital BankingCrypto & Blockchain
About

Banking and Bitcoin coexisting in the same account felt like a contradiction in terms for most of the 2010s. Banks were systematically closing accounts connected to crypto activity while the crypto industry was building parallel financial infrastructure that deliberately avoided the banking system. Bitwala was founded in Berlin in 2015 to bridge that gap — building a bank account with integrated Bitcoin functionality, letting users hold euros and Bitcoin in the same place and convert between them instantly. The product was genuinely novel: a German IBAN, a Visa debit card, and a Bitcoin wallet under one roof, with the regulatory standing of a licensed German financial institution. Bitwala rebranded to Nuri in 2021, reflecting a broader evolution from a Bitcoin-specific product toward a more comprehensive crypto banking platform. The Nuri brand subsequently entered insolvency in 2022, a casualty of the crypto market downturn and the difficult economics of building a consumer banking product. The Bitwala/Nuri story is one of the more instructive in European crypto banking — a genuinely innovative product that proved the market wanted crypto-integrated banking accounts, but that couldn't build a sustainable business model before the market turned.

Categories
Digital BankingCrypto & BlockchainWalletsNeobanks
Services
digital accountscrypto walletsmobile banking
Community comments0
No comments yet — be the first to share your thoughts.
Leave a comment
Comments are reviewed before publishing. Your email address will not be shown.
Visit website →
Quick facts
Founded2015
FoundersBenjamin Jones|Johann Bornman|Jörg von Minckwitz
Employees50-200
Business modelB2C
Target customersConsumers
Geographic focusDACH
Last updatedUpdated 6 days ago