Crypto’s new favourite bank downplaying connections to an industry it embraced

financialpost.com:

A small Pennsylvania bank has emerged as one of the biggest partners for the crypto industry — albeit a somewhat reluctant one.

Customers Bancorp Inc. partners with hundreds of digital-asset firms, including major exchanges, market makers and stablecoin issuers, according to people with knowledge of the matter. It attracted new clients after crypto-friendly lenders Silvergate Capital Corp. and Signature Bank collapsed, leaving Customers Bank — the West Reading-based company’s primary subsidiary — one of a few facilitators of dollar transactions that crypto businesses could turn to.

The lender, ranked the 81st-largest U.S. bank by assets, is now at the forefront of an industry battered by blowups, scrutinized by regulators and shunned by mainstream lenders — a very different spot from almost two years ago, when Bitcoin was at a record high and investors were piling in. Back then, Customers Bank chief executive officer Sam Sidhu touted his firm’s crypto ambitions. Today, the bank is putting a cap on crypto-related deposits and Sidhu says the assets are just one small piece of a broader plan to expand the bank’s payments business.

Crypto “provides a very good use case for us to prove our tech capabilities” for payments, Sidhu said in an interview. But Customers “will be focused on the types of industries that generate us stronger and deeper customer relationships.”

The bank operates a payments platform that enables crypto clients to move dollars with the same immediacy as crypto — 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Silvergate, which announced plans in March to wind down, and Signature, seized by regulators the same month, offered similar capabilities. Their closures — which came as depositors yanked money from small lenders