Morgan Stanley has launched direct cryptocurrency buying and selling on its E*Commerce platform, charging purchasers 50 foundation factors per transaction — a fee that undercuts Coinbase, Robinhood, and Charles Schwab.
The pilot is at the moment stay for a small group of customers, with all 8.6 million E*Commerce purchasers set to achieve entry later in 2026, in keeping with Bloomberg.
Cheaper than the competitors
The 0.5% price places Morgan Stanley under a number of rivals competing for retail crypto stream.
Schwab costs 75 foundation factors on its newly launched spot bitcoin and ether buying and selling.
Coinbase retail charges can climb above 0.5% relying on tier and cost technique, whereas Robinhood markets itself as commission-free however spreads on every commerce usually run 35 to 95 foundation factors.
Constancy’s separate crypto product costs roughly 1% per commerce.
The pilot covers bitcoin, ether, and solana. Custody, liquidity, and settlement run by Zerohash, the Chicago infrastructure agency during which Morgan Stanley holds a stake — the identical agency Mastercard just lately moved to accumulate in a deal reported close to $2 billion.
A part of a broader crypto push
Morgan Stanley’s Head of Wealth Administration, Jed Finn, framed the initiative as greater than a price play, saying it’s geared toward “disintermediating the disintermediators” — a broader structural shift in how purchasers entry digital property.
The E*Commerce launch comes weeks after the financial institution debuted MSBT, its spot bitcoin ETF, which launched in April with a 0.14% expense ratio, the most affordable within the US market.
Morgan Stanley has additionally filed for ether and solana ETFs and utilized for a nationwide belief financial institution constitution that may permit it to straight custody digital property.
Sources informed Bloomberg the financial institution can also be exploring companies that may let purchasers convert crypto holdings into exchange-traded merchandise with out promoting, and is getting ready for potential tokenized fairness buying and selling later this yr.
Scale that rivals can’t match
Roughly 16,000 in-house advisors oversee about $9.3 trillion in consumer property, giving Morgan Stanley a distribution channel few crypto-native exchanges can match.
The aggressive stress is actual: Coinbase generated $3.32 billion in client transaction income in 2025, whereas Robinhood reported almost $1 billion in crypto-related income.