In another sign of open banking’s growing role in crypto, Coinbase and Tink have launched direct bank-to-crypto transfers in Germany.
The new capability lets users move funds instantly from their bank accounts into crypto, authenticating the transaction through their bank’s interface. The underlying account-to-account payment rails are powered by Tink’s infrastructure—acquired by Visa three years ago and now integrated into platforms such as PayPal and Revolut.
The Coinbase integration is currently limited to Germany, but there is potential for broader expansion, as Tink’s network spans multiple European Union countries including Spain, France, and Sweden.
The Open Banking Drive
This collaboration was made possible by the EU’s ongoing drive for open banking, which enables third-party providers to connect with banks through APIs. These connections give consumers greater flexibility to switch financial institutions while allowing banks and credit unions to integrate with a wider array of digital services.
To govern these developments, the EU introduced its revised Payments Services Directive (PSD2)—a regulatory framework designed to secure customer data and increase competitiveness among the region’s banks.
Leveraging Interest
One way banks can deliver greater payments optionality to customers is by supporting cryptocurrencies. After an exceptional year of growth last year, crypto initiatives have become top of mind for nearly every financial institution worldwide.
Coinbase has capitalized on this momentum to forge new partnerships and expand its offerings. It launched a stablecoin acceptance platform for merchants through a collaboration with Shopify and gave app developers the ability to integrate crypto purchases via Apple Pay—streamlining a process that was once complex and costly.
Perhaps more notably, Coinbase recently launches was its x402 payments agentic commerce protocol, a platform which allows APIs, apps, and AI agents to conduct transactions during web interactions with minimal code integration. This opens the door for AI agents to autonomously perform stablecoin transactions.
While these integrations have expanded both Coinbase’s footprint and digital assets adoption, they also—and perhaps more importantly—represent progress toward an API-driven open banking model.
