Bybit Aims to Revolutionise Finance with Bold 2026 Crypto-Banking Vision

Mohammed Fathy

Last updated 3-02-2026

4 min

Bybit wants to become “The New Financial Platform”, blending crypto, banking and traditional markets.

The strategy targets 1.

4 billion underbanked people with “always‑on, borderless services”.

A new product, MyBank, launches in February 2026 to handle payments and cross‑border transfers.

ByCustody already secures over $5bn, signalling growing trust in hybrid financial models.

The plan aims to push crypto “into the financial mainstream”, with regulators firmly in mind.

Bybit, which is headquartered in the UAE and ranks as the world’s second‑largest crypto exchange by trading volume, has laid out an ambitious plan for 2026 that goes well beyond its trading roots. The company says it wants to become what it calls “The New Financial Platform”, essentially a single ecosystem bringing together crypto, traditional markets, banking and payments. Big talk, yes, but also a clear signal that crypto firms are keen to muscle into mainstream finance.

The vision was shared during the company’s biannual keynote, where co‑founder and chief executive Ben Zhou framed the move around one stubborn global problem: roughly 1.4 billion people are still underbanked. In many parts of the world, access to basic financial services is patchy, slow or simply too expensive. Anyone who’s spent time around early‑stage founders in the region — I’ve met plenty through the Arageek community over the years — will know how often payments and banking horror stories come up. It’s a bit of a faff, to put it mildly.

Bybit’s answer is to use blockchain infrastructure alongside regulated fiat systems to offer always‑on, borderless services. Zhou was quoted as saying that finance shouldn’t be constrained by geography, and that the goal is to link crypto tools with real economic activity, removing the barriers that keep people locked out of modern finance. It’s a familiar argument, but one that still feels spot on, especially for emerging markets.

A central plank of the strategy is something called MyBank, a retail banking layer expected to launch in February 2026. The idea is to give users dedicated accounts that can handle large fiat transfers, everyday payments and cross‑border activity, all within a compliance framework. By combining crypto liquidity with traditional banking rails, Bybit says MyBank will cut down transfer times and fees — issues that anyone running a startup across borders knows all too well. I reckon this is where execution will really matter.

Trust, of course, is the other side of the coin. Bybit says its institutional custody arm, ByCustody, already secures more than $5 billion in assets, used by over 30 professional asset managers. More than 2,000 institutions are now on the platform, double last year’s figure, which suggests growing appetite for hybrid models mixing traditional and digital assets. Whether that trust holds up in choppy markets is another question… well, we’ll see.

On the trading side, Bybit has been steadily expanding into so‑called TradFi products since 2022. The platform now supports more than 200 traditional instruments, with plans to reach 500 trading pairs, including stocks CFDs, forex, commodities and indices, all sitting alongside crypto. The pitch is simple: one place to manage everything. I’m not a fan of overloading platforms, but for active users this could be chuffed to bits territory.

The company says all this is being built with regulators in mind, working with over 10 global banks and custodial partners. The aim is unified collateral systems where fiat, traditional assets and crypto can coexist securely. Artificial intelligence also plays a behind‑the‑scenes role, with Bybit claiming AI tools have already lifted engineering productivity by 30%, and more automation coming in 2026 to trim costs and improve risk controls.

As Zhou put it, the transformation is about moving crypto out of its niche and into the financial mainstream, making it part of everyday economic life. It’s an ambitious roadmap, definately so, and while there are plenty of hurdles ahead, it shows how far the conversation has moved since the early days of pure crypto exchanges. And believe it or not, that shift could matter a great deal for founders and users across MENA who just want finance to work, you know?

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