Coinbase expands in Poland with Blik mobile payments integration

cointelegraphPublished on 2025-12-18Last updated on 2025-12-18

Abstract

Coinbase has expanded its payment options in Poland by integrating with the widely used mobile payment system Blik, through a partnership with European payment processor PPro. The move aims to simplify and accelerate crypto adoption by offering familiar local payment methods. This expansion occurs amid Poland's ongoing struggle to pass national cryptocurrency legislation, making it the only EU member state without a formal framework to enforce the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). Despite regulatory delays, Poland ranks eighth in Europe for crypto adoption. Coinbase holds a MiCA license, secured in June, allowing it to operate across the EU.

Major US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is expanding payment options in Poland by integrating with one of the country’s most widely used mobile payment systems.

Coinbase has partnered with European payment processor PPro to enable payments via Blik, a popular Polish mobile payment network with nearly 20 million users.

The announcement was made by Coinbase executive and NFT Paris co-founder Côme Prost, who joined the exchange in February 2024 to lead its French operations.

“Improving local payment rails is a key focus for us,” Prost said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday, highlighting the importance of simple, fast and familiar payment options in driving crypto adoption.

Coinbase holds MiCA licence as Poland struggles to pass crypto bill

Coinbase’s local expansion comes as Poland struggles to pass cryptocurrency legislation amid political divisions. Last week, the Polish government reintroduced an identical version of a strict crypto bill that had been vetoed by President Karol Nawrocki just weeks earlier.

Coinbase holds a license under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which it secured in June.

“It has been a pleasure working with the team at Coinbase to launch Blik on their platform to enable Polish customers to access Crypto,” PPro executive Tom Benson wrote in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.

Source: Tom Benson

He added that he was confident the partnership with Coinbase would deepen in 2026 as the company adds more local payment methods and expands collaboration across additional areas.

Poland’s crypto adoption booming despite lagging local regulation

Crypto adoption in Poland has surged despite slow-moving local legislation, with the country emerging as one of the leaders in Chainalysis’ 2025 European Crypto Adoption report.

Poland is the only EU member state without a functioning national legal framework to enforce the MiCA regulation, even though the framework applies even without formal implementation.

Poland ranks eighth in Europe by total crypto received, according to Chainalysis’ 2025 European Crypto Adoption report. Source: Chainalysis

Following the president’s veto of the government’s bill, Poland is indeed the only EU member state without any step toward implementation,” Juan Ignacio Ibañez, a member of the Technical Committee of the MiCA Crypto Alliance, told Cointelegraph recently.

Related: Coinbase adds stock trading, prediction markets in ‘everything app’ push

“Not every country has a single implementation law,” he added, pointing to Germany and France, which have specific laws, while other member states, such as Spain and Luxembourg, rely on amendments to existing financial legislation.

Ibañez noted, however, that a lag in implementation does not mean all countries are equally advanced, nor does it imply that Poland is more hostile to crypto. Hungary, for example, has implemented MiCA with additional regulations that are “more unfriendly to crypto asset service providers than Poland,” he added.

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