SoFi announces crypto and remittance offerings

SoFi Technologies is returning to crypto investing after a two-year hiatus — and the digital bank is also launching cross-border remittance payments in its app as it expands its “one-stop shop” strategy for digital financial services.

The digital bank announced on Wednesday that its customers will be able to buy, sell and hold popular cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum through SoFi’s website and mobile app. SoFi also anticipates expanding into stablecoins and other types of digital assets.

SoFi, which originally started as an online student loan refinancer and has since expanded into a wide range of digital banking products and services, will be officially releasing both its crypto and remittance services later this year for its customers. An exact timeline or release date was not announced by the company.

“The future of financial services is being completely reinvented through innovations in crypto, digital assets and blockchain more broadly,” said SoFi CEO Anthony Noto in a statement. “We’re accelerating our efforts to give members more choice and more control, whether they’re investing, sending money across borders, or planning for their future. Crypto and blockchain innovations can and will be threaded through each of our businesses and capabilities, including buying, paying, saving, investing, borrowing and protecting.”

Remittance payments — transactions sent to a foreign country when the sender is located in the U.S. — are a chunk of the global money movement economy that the United States contributes significantly to. The U.S. sent more than $188 billion in remittances abroad in 2021, according to the World Bank. All told, $478 billion in remittances were sent worldwide that year.

Remittance payments processing in the U.S. could be subject to the 3.5% remittance tax in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill if that portion of the bill passes in its current form. SoFi declined a request for comment, but the company’s announcement did state that customers would have “full transparency on exchange rates and fees upfront” for remittance payments within the SoFi app.

Not SoFi’s first crypto rodeo

This isn’t the first time SoFi has ventured into cryptocurrency services, as it previously hosted crypto trading on its platform before becoming a bank.

SoFi entered cryptocurrency trading in September 2019 as part of its SoFi Invest platform, which provided robo advice and trading in stocks and exchange-traded funds.

SoFi was then granted a “bitlicense” by the New York State Department of Financial Services in late 2019, which allowed customers in that state to trade cryptocurrencies through the company’s digital assets platform.

SoFi buys a bank, but crypto is rocky

SoFi, which started as a lending fintech called Social Finance in 2011, set its sights higher early on and initially applied for a bank charter back in 2017. Instead of gaining its own charter, however, SoFi followed the path of several other fintechs at the time and bought a community bank in late 2021. 

Regulators approved the $22.3 million deal to buy Golden Pacific Bank and turn it into SoFi Bank in January 2022 under one main condition: SoFi Bank “shall not engage in any crypto-asset activities” unless it cleared those efforts with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

“This levels the playing field and will ensure that SoFi’s deposit and lending activities are conducted safely and soundly, including limiting the bank’s ability to engage in crypto-asset activities,” then-acting Comptroller Michael Hsu said in a press release at the time.

Later that year, the collapse of FTX set regulators on edge. Members of the Senate Banking Committee expressed concerns in a series of letters to SoFi and banking regulators about whether SoFi’s crypto activities were appropriate for the bank in November 2022. According to the senators, the digital bank had two years as of January 2022 to divest from SoFi Digital Assets or see that the subsidiary’s impermissible digital-asset activities are in compliance with the law.

SoFi discontinues crypto

In November 2023, SoFi announced that it would be discontinuing crypto services by the end of the year and no new crypto accounts would be set up.

Existing customers had the option to either liquidate their crypto holdings or migrate them to Blockchain.com, with transaction fees waived for both options. Any crypto holdings left unsold on SoFi would be automatically liquidated to close the accounts, with the funds deposited back into customer brokerage accounts.

“At SoFi, our mission has always been clear: to help you get your money right,” the company said in a statement at the time. “However, sometimes this means making changes to our business … we’re here to make the migration as seamless as possible while continuing to offer members access to all investment opportunities.”

Regulation becomes more crypto-friendly

After the November 2024 election, things started looking up in the fintech world — especially for crypto investments.

Noto said in a January 2025 earnings call that “as the regulation changes, we will be incredibly aggressively tied to crypto and be in as many businesses as we can be across the entire platform. Previously we were just doing trading — you can see us going well beyond that, depending on the regulation. … We hope the administration and the regulators come up with clarity on what the outlook will be, but we’ll move as aggressively as anyone else once that is determined.”

Letters 1183 and 1184 issued by the OCC in March and May 2025 now permit nationally chartered banks to provide crypto custody and execution services on behalf of their customers.

The GENIUS Act, a bill regarding stablecoin regulation, also passed in the Senate last week. Next, it will go to the House and if it passes there, onto President Trump for his signature.