“Partnering with Coinbase accelerates our ability to bring innovative, crypto financial solutions to our clients,” stated the Chairman and CEO of PNC William S. Demchak. “We will also provide PNC’s best-in-class banking services to Coinbase. This collaboration enables us to meet growing demand for secure and streamlined access to digital assets on PNC’s trusted platform.”

As part of the agreement, Coinbase will receive select banking services from PNC. The partnership merges PNC’s banking expertise with Coinbase’s institutional grade crypto and Bitcoin infrastructure to meet rising demand for secure, mainstream access to digital assets.

“This partnership with Coinbase enables us to explore where we think the market holds the most promise, where there’s the most demand and frankly where our clients are really most interested in,” said the Head of Treasury Management of the bank Emma Loftus in an interview.

PNC is also interested in use cases for commercial and corporate clients for payments and treasury-management functions, but that isn’t yet as developed for digital assets, Loftus said. The bank does see potential for settling payments in a form of digital assets in the future, according to Loftus.

“As crypto becomes more ubiquitous at the point-of-sale or negotiated into contracts to purchase goods, being able to support our clients to be able to settle in that currency — for a lack of a better word — will be important,” she said. “But that’s not tomorrow.”

The Head of Coinbase Institutional Brett Tejpaul commented, “PNC is a market leader in delivering best-in-class products for their clients. We’re thrilled to support their entry into the digital asset market with our leading Crypto as a Service platform, which provides PNC with a powerful set of tools to develop a scalable, high-growth business, built on a foundation of uncompromising security.”