Credit Union Member Crypto Ownership Lags Other FIs, Still High

While a large percentage of credit union (CU) members hold or have held cryptocurrencies, they still lag customers of other financial institutions (FIs).

Beyond that, all but the youngest CU members are more likely to have held onto crypto during the crypto winter that has taken root for 10 of the past 12 months, according to “Credit Union Innovation: Cryptocurrency as a Key to Member Loyalty,” a PYMNTS and PSCU collaboration.

Almost 29% of CU members have held crypto at some point, 26% in the past year. But for non-CU members, those numbers are 34% and 32%. And about 20% of current CU members hold crypto, 4% less than non-CU members.

When breaking those banking customers down by age group, the most startling numbers come from the youngest, Generation Z, who are far more likely to have sold off their crypto holdings in the past year. That’s especially true of Gen Z CU members.

While they are somewhat less like to have ever held crypto, 44% to 50%, they are far more likely to have gotten rid of it than their non-CU counterparts, and vastly more so than other, older CU members.

Nearly 50% of Gen Z CU members got rid of crypto in the past 12 months — a little more than 22% currently holds it, while a little less than 22% sold it. Among non-CU customers, about 35% hold it and 15% sold it.

Compare that almost half to CU millennial, bridge millennial and Generation X customers, where the numbers run from about one-fifth to one-sixth.

Among non-CU members in those three demographics, the number who abandoned crypto was about one quarter, and just 15% held it sometime in the past year but no longer do.

That’s enough that it’s hard not to wonder whether Gen Z has been particularly disillusioned by crypto, which soared to new heights throughout most of 2021 before collapsing that November. Bitcoin soared from about $20,000 at the beginning of 2021 to nearly $69,000 in November before giving up all gains this year.

As for the desire to be able to buy and sell crypto through their banking app or website, well over half of all bank customers — about 57% — wanted to be able to do both on a single platform.

But again, CU members were slightly less interested — 17% to almost 22%.However, nearly all traditional bank types —national, regional and local banks as well as CUs — were about as likely to have access to crypto services on their banking portals: 14% to 18% at traditional FIs, with CUs in the middle at 16%.

But digital and online banks were more than twice as likely to offer customers access to crypto services, with nearly 39% doing so.

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