BNY taps Figment to bring staking into its digital asset custody service

BNY, the bank that holds a staggering share of the world’s financial assets, wants its crypto clients to earn yield without ever leaving the building. The banking giant will use Figment’s validator infrastructure to power staking inside its existing Digital Asset Custody service.

Figment announced the arrangement on Thursday. It is the second staking partnership BNY has struck this year, which suggests this is less an experiment and more a product line.

How the BNY and Figment arrangement works

The setup is simple, at least on paper. Eligible institutions that already hold digital assets with BNY can stake supported assets through the bank’s custody platform.

Figment handles the validator side. BNY keeps the assets in custody.

Staking is how proof-of-stake blockchains secure themselves. Holders lock up tokens to help validate transactions and receive rewards in return.

This deal lets eligible clients stake assets held at BNY and earn rewards without transferring those assets externally. For a pension-adjacent asset manager, that distinction is the whole ballgame.

Figment said BNY’s target clients include asset managers, exchange-traded fund issuers, corporates and wealth management firms. Those eligible will be able to collect staking rewards on supported assets kept on the platform.

The partnership was announced on or around November 12, 2026.

The numbers behind both partners

BNY managed approximately $62.6 trillion in assets under custody as of June 30, 2026, which describes it as the world’s largest custodian bank.

Figment, a leading non-custodial staking provider, oversees more than $18 billion in staked assets. It serves over 1,500 institutional clients across 30 protocols.

Non-custodial is the key word. Figment runs the validators but does not take possession of client assets, which is exactly why it slots neatly behind a custodian like BNY.

Background: BNY’s growing staking stack

This is not BNY’s first move into staking. In August 2026, the bank reached an agreement with Galaxy Digital that also focused on enhancing staking capabilities on the same Digital Asset Custody platform.

The Figment deal also fits within BNY’s broader digital asset expansion, which includes work on tokenized deposits and EU-regulated custody solutions under MiCA, the European Union’s crypto regulatory framework.

What this means for institutions and the staking market

For institutional investors, the appeal is combining two things that have historically lived apart: a trusted custodian and on-chain yield.

ETF issuers are an especially interesting group on BNY’s client list. Funds holding proof-of-stake assets have an obvious incentive to capture staking rewards, and doing so through their existing custodian could simplify operations considerably.

The multi-vendor approach also matters. With both Galaxy Digital and Figment in the mix, BNY can avoid reliance on a single validator operator, a sensible move given that validator downtime or penalties can eat into rewards.