Buying crypto through Sparkasse costs DekaBank 0.99 euros in transaction fees per purchase and per sale, plus a spread that no document quantifies. Custody, delivery to an external wallet address and customer support are free of charge. The most important restriction appears only in the glossary of the product page, not in the price list: deliveries go exclusively to addresses of certain approved crypto-asset service providers, and your own hardware wallet is blocked as a destination.
These figures and conditions can now be sourced directly. DekaBank has published the contractual documents for “Krypto – powered by Deka”, among them a document dated October 2026. Until then, pricing, selection and timetable came from the trade publication Platow, and our own assessment of the planned October launch had to flag exactly that. The number now sits in the original.
Transaction fee of 0.99 euros: what a purchase at Sparkasse costs under the price list
The “price information for crypto assets” issued by DekaBank Deutsche Girozentrale, dated September 2026, covers the crypto-asset business in three lines. The transaction fee for buying and selling is 0.99 euros. There is no minimum order size per transaction. The maximum order size per transaction is 250,000 euros.
A transaction fee is the charge a bank levies for executing a single order. It appears on the statement as a separate item, and at DekaBank it is a flat fee: the same amount on a 20 euro order as on a 20,000 euro one.
The effect of that flat fee varies enormously with order size. Measured against the order volume, it comes to 3.96 percent on 25 euros, 1.98 percent on 50 euros, 0.99 percent on 100 euros and 0.099 percent on 1,000 euros. For a saver putting a small amount to work each month, a flat fee is a percentage fee in disguise, and a steep one.
The same document lists what costs nothing: registration and identity verification, crypto custody including position keeping, the portfolio display in the Sparkasse app, delivery of crypto assets to an external wallet address, provision of documents in the electronic mailbox, order and transaction statements, and quarterly and annual reports on crypto holdings. Customer support by email and telephone is also free; the hotline is open Monday to Thursday from 8am to 6pm and Friday from 8am to 5pm.
No minimum order, but a 250,000 euro ceiling per transaction
The absence of a minimum order size is the more practically relevant of the two limits for newcomers. A ten euro purchase is formally permitted, even though the flat fee makes it expensive. Investors who want to put small amounts to work regularly are better served by longer intervals and larger individual amounts than by weekly micro-purchases.
The 250,000 euro ceiling per transaction affects few retail clients directly, but it says something about how the product is built: it is designed for volume business inside a banking app, not for block orders. Larger amounts would have to be split across several transactions, each carrying its own fee and its own ratio.
The request-for-quote model: DekaBank’s own spread appears in no price list
Trading runs on a request-for-quote basis, or RfQ, rather than through an open order book. RfQ means the client asks for a price, the bank names a quote binding for a limited period, and an order can be placed on that basis while the quote is valid. The product page describes this as a binding price guaranteed by DekaBank for a limited window.
What that price consists of is set out in the price information itself: the quote “is based on a market reference price (including real-time price data) plus a DekaBank-specific spread”. It adds that with larger volumes or increased volatility the pricing may be adjusted, for instance through spread adjustments, shorter quote validity or a restriction on tradability.
The spread is the gap between the price at which an asset can be bought and the price at which it could be sold at the same moment. It never shows up on a statement as a fee, because it is not a charge but is built into the price. It is paid all the same. None of the published documents names a level, a range or a cap, and the wording on adjustments leaves open how far it may widen in a turbulent market. For cost comparison, that means the 99 cents are known and the larger part of the price is not. We reported this same finding for Sparkasse and Volksbank back in September, when not a single product page named a price; the commission has been documented since then, the spread has not.
99 cents or 1.5 percent commission: at an order volume of 66 euros the two models meet
DekaBank’s flat fee can be set against the model used by the cooperative banks. Volksbank Raiffeisenbank Würzburg charges 1.5 percent per purchase and per sale for crypto-asset trading under its schedule of prices and services, likewise plus a spread. The two models cost the same when 0.99 euros equals exactly 1.5 percent of the order volume, which happens at 66 euros.
Below that threshold the percentage commission is cheaper, above it the flat fee, and the gap widens quickly: on an order volume of 1,000 euros it is 99 cents against 15 euros. This calculation applies strictly to the quantified fees. Because both institutions also take a spread and neither discloses it, it is a partial sum and not a total price.
The alternatives deserve a look. Investors who want to compare will find the terms of trading venues licensed under the European crypto regulation in our overview; at several of them the fee is a percentage, but the spread is disclosed. Which model works out cheaper depends on order size and on how often you trade.
Delivery only to CASP addresses: your own hardware wallet is blocked as a destination
Delivery to an external wallet address is free of charge. The destination, however, is not free. The product page puts it in these words: “With Krypto – powered by Deka, delivery is possible only to wallet addresses of certain crypto-asset service providers (CASPs). Delivery to other wallet addresses is excluded.”
CASP stands for crypto-asset service provider, meaning a crypto business licensed and supervised under the European crypto regulation MiCAR. Exchanges and custodians are covered, private individuals are not. A hardware wallet belongs to its owner rather than to a service provider, and that is precisely why it is not an eligible recipient address.
In practice, no route leads from the Sparkasse app straight to a device in your own drawer. To hold your bitcoin yourself, you need a detour through an approved provider that accepts the delivery and then allows a transfer on to an address of your own. Two transfers instead of one, two chances to transpose a digit in the address, and depending on the provider network fees on the second leg. If that is the route you intend to take, check the devices and how they handle in our hardware wallet comparison first, and confirm with the intermediary that it accepts deposits from a bank at all.
Minimum amounts for deliveries: five thresholds between roughly seven and 22 euros
Deliveries have a document of their own, and it is the most recent of the set: “minimum amounts for deliveries”, dated October 2026. It lists, for each crypto asset, a quantity below which no delivery is made.
- Bitcoin: 0.0001
- Ethereum: 0.01
- Ripple: 10
- Solana: 0.1
- Polygon: 100
Expressed as quantities, these thresholds look arbitrary. Converted into euros at prices on October 10, they sit close together: around 7 euros for Bitcoin, about 22 euros for Ethereum, a good 12 euros for XRP, just under 10 euros for Solana and roughly 9 euros for Polygon. The bank has therefore set the limits by value, in a band of about seven to 22 euros, and not by quantity.
That is good news for small holdings and a warning for fractions: anyone holding 15 euros in Ethereum falls short of the delivery threshold and has to buy more or sell. Because prices move, those euro amounts move with them; the quantities in the document stay fixed.
Private keys in an omnibus wallet: custody in trust without a key of your own
How the holdings are kept is explained by the product page itself: under “Krypto – powered by Deka”, the private keys are held in trust for clients in a jointly managed omnibus wallet.
An omnibus wallet is pooled custody: the holdings of many clients sit in the same blockchain addresses, and the bank tracks in its own books who is owed what. A private key is the secret key that grants access to crypto assets. In this model the bank holds it, not the client. There is no personal address to look up in a blockchain explorer and no key of your own to lock away.
What hangs on this for investors we have already set out at length on the question of keys: why there is no key of your own to the bitcoin at Sparkasse. The new documents confirm that design and add the delivery restriction to it.
Five tradable crypto assets, no deposit guarantee
According to the document “crypto assets supported by DekaBank”, five assets can be traded: Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Polygon (POL), Ripple (XRP) and Solana (SOL). That corrects a widespread impression: it is not just Bitcoin and Ether, but it is not a broad selection either. A token outside those five is not available here.
On risk the bank is explicit. Cryptocurrencies are frequently exposed to sharp price swings, with volatility that “can lead to total loss”. Risks remain even under professional custody, for instance from attacks on blockchain infrastructure. In exceptional market situations, during technical disruptions or in maintenance windows, trading may be restricted, so that a purchase or sale is not always possible at the moment or the price intended.
The sentence that matters most to bank clients: “Unlike bank deposits, cryptocurrencies are not covered by the statutory deposit guarantee scheme.” The crypto account sits in the same app as the current account, but the protection of the deposit guarantee stops at the border between the two.
Before the first order: how to check the three terms that affect you
The account is opened through the Sparkasse app, as Deka describes it: clients with a current account at a participating Sparkasse open the “Anlegen” section of the app and find the “Krypto – powered by Deka” offering there. Trading is secured with the app’s familiar tools, such as push TAN.
What remains open
The word “participating” carries weight. Each of the roughly 370 institutions decides for itself whether to switch the service on, and nothing in Deka’s documents implies that a particular Sparkasse already offers it. What is documented is that the terms are fixed and that the route runs through the Sparkasse app. What is not documented is whether it is already open in any specific place; only a look in your own app or a question to your own Sparkasse will show that.
Our assessment
From the editorial desk, this offering is a holding product inside the bank rather than an entry into self-custody. Much speaks for the fee: 99 cents on an order volume of 1,000 euros is 0.099 percent, while the Würzburg cooperative bank takes 1.5 percent. Against an overall verdict stands the fact that the spread is quantified in none of the four documents and may expressly be adjusted when volatility rises. The exclusion of third-party wallet addresses weighs more heavily than any fee, because it decides not the price but the control. The bank’s counter-argument holds up against that: the delivery itself is free, and the minimum amounts are low at seven to 22 euros. What is limited is the destination of a withdrawal, not its price.
Crypto at Sparkasse: the spread remains the unknown quantity
- Measure the total cost yourself. On a first small order, work out how far the quote shown deviates from the market price, and add the 99 cents. That difference is the real price. The price list of a licensed trading venue from our overview of regulated crypto exchanges serves as the benchmark.
- Settle the exit route before any money goes in. If the holding is later meant to move to an address of your own, you need an approved provider as a staging post. Pick the device in advance in the hardware wallet comparison and confirm with your exchange that it accepts deposits from a bank.
- Carry the tax side along from the start. Every purchase and sale is a tax-relevant event with its own date. DekaBank’s quarterly and annual reports are free and belong in your own archive; for ongoing record keeping, the tools in our comparison of tax software and portfolio trackers help.
The documents are available in full from the bank itself: the product page for “Krypto – powered by Deka” and the price information for crypto assets.
(As of October 10, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)
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