Company
Russia's largest bank, state-controlled, offering retail and corporate banking, with AI and data-center operations and a growing crypto business.
Russia's central bank says its digital currency law bars transfers to non-custodial wallets and allows peer-to-peer crypto trades only until July 1, 2027. Licensed intermediaries, Sberbank among them, will handle everything after that.
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Bank of Russia told individuals on October 15, 2026 that they cannot move digital currency from regulated accounts into self-custody wallets. Sberbank won approval to run crypto exchange services the same day, so coins bought on licensed venues now stay in licensed custody.
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Ukrainian drones hit Sberbank's Balakovo data center on Wednesday, the fourth Russian site struck in a week after three of Yandex's. Neither company has said whether a supercomputer was damaged.
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Sberbank, Russia's largest lender, won Bank of Russia approval to run crypto exchange services, with first products due Dec. 1. US Treasury sanctions rules cover crypto transactions with blocked Russian institutions as well as fiat transfers.
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Bank of Russia's first crypto registers give Sberbank and VTB three of the nine slots. Both banks plan to open crypto trading to their clients by December, though Sberbank's listing so far covers custody alone.
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Sber says it will take USDT and Ether as loan collateral once the Bank of Russia permits public trading, which means the menu is set by the listing tests the central bank published on 11 August, not by the bank's appetite.
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Sber has put a price on moving Russian trade payments out of the fiat system, and the price is the only quantity it published; the app that would make it self-service is not due until the end of 2026.
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