Maerki Baumann

Maerki Baumann is an independent, family-owned private bank based in Zurich, founded in 1932 and still controlled by the Syz family, who hold roughly nine tenths of the shares between chairman Hans G. Syz-Witmer and vice-chairwoman Carole Schmied-Syz. It is a small institution by Swiss standards, with client assets in the low double-digit billions of francs and around a hundred staff, but that scale is part of the pitch: decisions get made by people who actually know the client, not by a committee several layers removed. What sets Maerki Baumann apart from most private banks its size is that it built a full business banking line for blockchain and crypto companies years before most Swiss institutions would touch the sector, and it now runs that line under its own brand, ARCHIP.

ARCHIP is where the corporate crypto banking actually happens. A blockchain company, exchange, fund, or wallet provider opening a relationship gets a business payment account and a capital account in major fiat currencies, connected to e-banking and a mobile app for day to day transfers, along with debit and credit cards for the team. This is the operational layer that keeps payroll, supplier payments, and general cash management running through a licensed Swiss bank rather than a patchwork of e-money accounts, which matters for a company whose core business already invites extra scrutiny from counterparties and auditors.

Custody sits alongside the payment accounts as a core service rather than an afterthought. ARCHIP holds a range of major digital assets using institutional-grade security, and clients get round-the-clock access to balances and transactions through the same e-banking and mobile platform used for fiat. Staking is available on selected assets, letting a company earn a return on treasury holdings it would otherwise leave idle, and the bank's advisory team can weigh in on the mainstream cryptocurrencies and tokens a corporate client is likely to hold. Because custody and banking sit under one roof, a treasurer is not reconciling a separate custodian's statement against the bank's own ledger every month.

Where Maerki Baumann distinguishes itself further is capital procurement work for tokenised fundraising. The bank supports ICO, IEO, and STO structuring, including the investor audits and documentation that Swiss and EU regulators expect before a token sale can proceed cleanly, plus general structuring and investment advice for how a company should hold its own assets through the process. For a founder raising through a token issuance rather than a conventional equity round, having the bank of record also involved in structuring the raise removes one layer of coordination between legal counsel, auditors, and the account that actually receives the funds.

The bank backs this with a partner network rather than trying to do everything in-house: technology specialists, tax lawyers, and crypto traders and custodians it can introduce a client to as needed. New companies also get help with the more mundane side of getting started in Switzerland, including guidance on incorporation and choosing a pension structure for the founding team, an area most crypto-focused banks do not touch at all.

Opening a relationship follows the pattern of Swiss private banking rather than a fintech sign-up flow. Expect a conversation with a relationship manager before an application form, documentation on the company's structure, ownership, and the source of the funds it plans to bank, and a review that weighs the specific business model rather than applying a single blanket policy to anything labelled crypto. That review is more work upfront than a digital-only EMI, but it is also what makes the relationship durable: a company that clears Maerki Baumann's onboarding is unlikely to be debanked on short notice the way crypto businesses sometimes are at banks that only tolerate the sector reluctantly.

The bank has also been building beyond Switzerland. In February 2026 it received approval from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Market to open a branch there, extending its reach into a jurisdiction that has actively courted digital asset businesses. For a crypto company with operations or investors spanning the Gulf and Europe, that gives Maerki Baumann a second regulated base rather than a purely domestic Swiss footprint, though the day to day ARCHIP banking relationship for most clients still runs through Zurich.

That last point reflects the wider context ARCHIP sits inside: Maerki Baumann is fundamentally a private bank, and its Entrepreneur Banking desk treats a founder's business and personal finances as one connected picture rather than two separate relationships. A company using ARCHIP for its corporate treasury can also bring its founders' personal wealth planning, pension arrangements, and eventual succession questions to the same institution. That combination will not matter to every crypto startup, but for a founding team that has built real value and wants one bank thinking about both the company's balance sheet and their own, it is a genuine point of difference from a pure-play digital asset bank.

Pricing is not published for the ARCHIP corporate offering, which is standard for relationship-driven private banking rather than a sign of anything unusual: account setup, transaction costs, and custody fees are worked out with a relationship manager based on the client's activity and asset base. A very early-stage project with minimal treasury holdings may find the relationship model heavier than it needs, since Maerki Baumann is not built for instant, self-serve onboarding the way a fintech EMI is.

Set against Switzerland's other regulated crypto banks, Maerki Baumann occupies a distinct niche. Sygnum and AMINA both built themselves from the ground up as pure digital asset banks with institutional trading desks; Bank Frick in neighbouring Liechtenstein bundles crypto custody into a broader corporate banking product. Maerki Baumann is smaller than all three and wraps its crypto offering inside a nearly century-old private bank, which suits a company that wants Swiss-regulated banking and custody for its crypto operations without giving up the option of a more traditional wealth relationship alongside it.

Maerki Baumann and ARCHIP make sense for a blockchain company, token issuer, or crypto fund based in or near Switzerland that wants a single regulated institution covering business banking, digital asset custody, and the structuring work around a token sale, particularly if the founders themselves have started to accumulate personal wealth worth planning around. It is less suited to a company that wants to open an account in minutes with no relationship manager involved. For the founder who has outgrown that stage and wants a bank that will still be answering the phone in twenty years, Maerki Baumann's combination of longevity and early crypto specialisation is hard to match at its scale.