Tinkoff Group bought a crypto project in Switzerland

Tinkoff has acquired its first crypto project: as The Bell learned, TCS Group Holding, the bank's parent structure, bought a stake in the Swiss cryptocurrency company Aximetria. How the bank will build its crypto business is not yet known. But back in the summer, the head of the group, Oliver Hughes, said that although cryptocurrencies are a popular investment tool for investors, the bank does not have a mechanism to offer them this product in Russia, because the Central Bank takes a very tough position on this issue.

The fact that TCS Group bought a stake in Aximetria, a Swiss crypto exchange with Russian founders, was told by The Bell by two sources in the financial market. From the documents of Aximetria GmbH itself , it follows that on November 9 last year, TCS Group bought back 4,449 shares of the company at 100 Swiss francs each (about 36 million rubles in total), and the total share capital of the company amounted to 534,700 Swiss francs. Based on this, the share of TCS Group in the company may be 83.2%. The fact that Aximetria is now part of the TCS Group is also stated directly on the website of the crypto service.

“Aximetria will develop as part of the international expansion of the Tinkoff Group in compliance with all the requirements of the jurisdictions of the international presence. Details of the transaction will be disclosed in accordance with accepted disclosure standards in the Group's annual financial statements.

Aximetria is one of the first companies to receive permission from FINMA (Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority) to process crypto and fiat transactions, according to the website of the service. The company was founded in 2018 by Alexei Axelrod, a native of MTS and AFK Sistema. He started building a crypto project in 2017 together with the Digital Horizon investment company, which at the start invested $120,000 in the service. The company also did not disclose the details of the deal with TCS Group, but explained that, as a rule, in the Russian market, Digital Horizon invests up to $2 million in portfolio companies and owns a share of 70-80%.

In June 2021, in an interview with CNBC, Tinkoff Group CEO Oliver Hughes said that although qualified investors who know what to do want to invest in cryptocurrency, Tinkoff Bank cannot offer such services due to the position of the regulator. “Currently, we don’t have a mechanism to offer them this product in Russia, because the Central Bank is taking a very tough position,” said at the time. Hughes