Texas Bank to Add Bitcoin Salary Payments in Employee Savings Program

Texas-based Laredo Vantage Bank is planning to offer a new way for their employees to have a Bitcoin savings plan with the company in a bid to step away from traditional savings plans.

The new program, NYDIG’s Bitcoin Savings Plan, aims to serve as a simple means of investment in Bitcoin. The Bitcoin Savings Plan will allow willing employees of the bank to automatically convert a portion of each paycheck to Bitcoin. The Bitcoin is then held on NYDIG’s institutional-grade custody platform.

?BREAKING: Texas bank Laredo to offer salary payments in #Bitcoin as part of staff savings plans.

— Bitcoin Archive ??? (@BTC_Archive) April 5, 2022

The implementation of the employee program reportedly makes the bank one of the first, if not the first, bank in the state of Texas to have such a savings plan program for employees.

According to the bank, the launch of the new savings program exemplifies the financial evolution of Bitcoin and how businesses are responding to provide competitive benefits packages to employees.

U.S. banks are engaging in cryptocurrency

In 2021, a host of prominent U.S. banks began offering wealth management clients exposure to crypto, with Morgan Stanley leading the charge. Morgan Stanley said in March that clients with at least $2 million in assets at the bank would be able to access three Bitcoin funds. JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo & Co and Citigroup are among the other banks that offer crypto exposure to their wealth management clients.

Back in February 2021, Bank of New York Mellon stated that it would hold, transfer and issue Bitcoin for asset management customers, making it one of the first large Wall Street banks to do so. The debut is scheduled for later this year.

In October, U.S. Bancorp launched Bitcoin custody services. NYDIG, a Bitcoin company, works as a sub-custodian for the bank, and its services are aimed at institutional investors with private funds.

Meanwhile, in a 2020 report issued by the World Economic Forum, Deutsche Bank secretly announced plans to offer a service for institutional investors to keep and trade cryptocurrencies, stating that it had already completed a proof of concept.