Fidelity's Platform Adds Bitcoin Holdings

Fidelity Investments now allows its clients to view their bitcoin, ether, and litecoin holdings at Coinbase from inside its web portal. The company first announced its plan to integrate with the bitcoin exchange back in May.

Also read: Fidelity Integrates with Coinbase, Mines Bitcoin and Accepts Bitcoin at its Cafeteria

Fidelity Allows Clients to View Bitcoin Holdings on Its Website

Boston-based financial services corporation Fidelity Investments Inc announced on Wednesday that its customers can now view their cryptocurrency holdings at Coinbase on the company’s website. Coinbase users will be able to view their bitcoin, ether, and litecoin holdings alongside their other accounts in their Fidelity Portfolio.

This is made possible due to a partnership between the firm’s innovation center, Fidelity Labs, and Coinbase. Reuters reported:

Starting Wednesday, most Fidelity clients will be able to authorize Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States, to provide the fund manager with data on their holdings.

Fidelity Investments has approximately $2.21 trillion in total managed assets and $6 trillion customer assets under administration as of March 31. The plan to integrate with Coinbase was announced in May by CEO Abigail Johnson. At the time, she also revealed that the cafeteria at the firm’s headquarters accepts bitcoin payments.

A Crypto Experiment

This initiative was previously tested with Fidelity employees, which is “a rare example of an established financial services company warming up to cryptocurrencies,” wrote Reuters. By integrating with Coinbase, the company aims to learn more about digital currencies. Fidelity Labs managing director Hadley Stern said that, “when we allowed customers to donate bitcoin to our charitable fund we were unsure about how many people would do it, but it played out well.” He told Reuters on Wednesday:

This is an experiment in the spirit of learning what these crypto assets are like and how our customers may want to interact with them.

Coinbase’s Integration With Other Financial Institutions

Prior to Fidelity, Coinbase has already integrated with other major financial institutions to display cryptocurrency balances through their web portals.

In March 2016, the company integrated with Texas-based retail bank USAA. Over 11,000 USAA customers were already Coinbase customers at the time, and were immediately able to view their Coinbase balances alongside the rest of their USAA accounts on the bank’s website. Both Coinbase wallet and vault balances show up inside of the bank’s online and mobile accounts. USAA also offers transaction monitoring for each bitcoin wallet in their portal.

In May, Norway’s largest Internet-based bank, Skandiabanken, likewise began offering customers access to their Coinbase balances on their platform. The bank’s customers can view their bitcoin, ether, and litecoin balances from Coinbase alongside their savings and checking accounts.

What do you think of Fidelity’s integration with Coinbase? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Fidelity Investments, New York Post, Coinbase, USAA

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