IG Europe partners with Bitpanda to launch spot crypto across EU

IG Europe announced a partnership with Austrian exchange Bitpanda that will let the broker provide spot cryptocurrency trading to clients throughout the European Union [2]. The deal gives IG access to Bitpanda’s liquidity pools, trading connectivity and market data, allowing the regulated broker to roll out crypto products without building its own infrastructure [5].

The collaboration is part of a broader push by IG Group, the FTSE 100‑listed trading platform that serves more than 1.3 million customers worldwide, to deepen its digital‑asset offering. Over the past months IG has acquired Australian exchange Independent Reserve, secured a MiCA licence in Germany, and sold its futures platform Small Exchange to Kraken as part of a separate collaboration [2][3]. Those moves have already enabled spot crypto launches in Australia and the United Kingdom, and the new Bitpanda partnership extends that capability to the rest of Europe [3].

Bitpanda’s institutional arm, Bitpanda Enterprise, will supply the back‑office infrastructure needed for compliance with the EU’s Markets in Crypto‑Assets (MiCA) regime, which imposes strict capital, governance and custody requirements [3][5]. By tapping an existing, regulated provider, IG can meet those standards more quickly than building a proprietary solution. The partnership also aligns with Bitpanda’s own expansion, which includes adding thousands of equities and ETFs to its platform and launching in the UK earlier this year [1][2].

While crypto still represents a tiny slice of IG Group’s revenue—spot crypto generated just $3.2 million, under 1 % of its £331.2 million first‑quarter earnings—both firms see growing demand from retail and institutional investors for regulated crypto exposure [3]. The alliance positions IG to capture that demand across the EU, and gives Bitpanda a high‑profile infrastructure client, reinforcing its role as a go‑to partner for financial institutions entering the digital‑asset market [5].

The real question now is whether the partnership will translate into meaningful market share for IG in a region where MiCA compliance is still shaping the competitive landscape, and how quickly other brokers will follow suit to meet client appetite for secure, regulated crypto access.