Charles Schwab launched its spot digital asset trading platform, Schwab Crypto, this week for retail clients across the US — but not in New York or Louisiana. The service charges a 75-basis-point fee on each trade and relies on Charles Schwab Premier Bank (CSPB) to hold customer assets, while Paxos handles trade execution and sub-custody under a federally overseen trust model. The rollout puts Schwab alongside Morgan Stanley as the two biggest traditional brokerages to offer direct crypto ownership to everyday investors.
How Schwab Crypto works
The platform initially supports Bitcoin and Ethereum. CSPB acts as the qualified custodian for safekeeping and record-keeping; Paxos runs the order flow. That two-layer structure mirrors what some crypto-native exchanges have moved toward under regulatory pressure. Schwab clients already hold about 20% of spot crypto ETPs, per the firm — now they can buy the underlying assets directly. The 75-basis-point fee sits well above the 0% commissions Schwab charges for stocks and ETFs, but it's in line with what other brokers charge for crypto trades. Morgan Stanley's pilot on E*Trade, for comparison, charges 50 basis points.
The rollout plan
Schwab is taking a phased approach. An internal employee pilot kicked off first, then a client waitlist went live. Eligible customers throughout the rest of 2026 will get access as the firm scales. Jonathan Craig, Schwab's head of retail investing, said the platform is designed to give clients direct access backed by service, education, and research tools. The company plans to add more digital assets later and eventually let users deposit and withdraw crypto to and from the platform — a feature not available at launch.
What Schwab and Morgan Stanley are betting on
The two giants are making different fee and feature bets. Morgan Stanley's E*Trade pilot, limited to select users for now, charges 50 basis points and aims to add conversion of digital assets into ETP shares without a taxable sale, plus tokenized equities trading in the second half of 2026. Morgan Stanley's Jed Finn described the effort as 'disintermediating the disintermediators' — a jab at crypto-native exchanges that built their businesses on cutting out banks and brokers. Schwab's approach leans into its own banking infrastructure rather than outsourcing custody to a third party like Coinbase or Gemini.
Schwab's waitlist is open, and the firm expects to keep onboarding clients in batches through the year. The big unresolved question is when transfer capabilities will arrive — without them, users can buy and sell crypto inside Schwab but can't move it out. That feature is on the roadmap but has no hard date. Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, expects to open its pilot to all 8.6 million E*Trade clients later in 2026.
