Interactive Brokers will now allow retail investors to fund individual brokerage accounts with stablecoins, a step aimed at keeping pace with the increasingly competitive retail trading market, Bloomberg reported Friday.
The Greenwich, Connecticut-based brokerage firm competes with rivals including Robinhood Markets Inc. and Charles Schwab Corp. and earlier this year expanded its cryptocurrency trading capabilities alongside its offerings of stocks, options and futures.
The development highlights how traditional brokerages are increasingly incorporating crypto-linked features to hold on to retail clients as digital assets gain a firmer foothold in mainstream finance. Allowing stablecoins to be used for account funding places Interactive Brokers among a growing group of firms testing blockchain-based payment rails to reduce friction and speed up transfers, while keeping pace with rivals such as Robinhood that have more aggressively expanded into crypto.
The firm will gradually introduce the feature, starting with a portion of eligible US clients, an Interactive Brokers spokesperson confirmed in an emailed statement. The firm’s chairman, Thomas Peteterffty, initially announced the new capability at a Goldman Sachs conference on Wednesday,
Using stablecoins allows customers to fund accounts directly from cryptocurrency wallets rather than bank accounts.
Interactive Brokers has also been active in adjacent crypto markets, including prediction markets tied to economic events.
In October, Interactive Brokers led a $104 million funding round for crypto and stablecoin infrastructure provider ZeroHash, which valued the company at $1 billion. That came months after Peterffy told Reuters the firm was exploring issuing its own stablecoin, while also considering allowing customers to fund accounts using tokens issued by third parties.
The firm did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.