MILAN, July 1 (Reuters) - Mesh, a U.S. fintech whose

investors include PayPal Ventures, will provide customers of

Italian digital asset wallet Conio access to several leading

crypto exchanges, such as Binance or Coinbase, the two companies

said on Monday.

The partnership will allow Conio's 430,000 Italian customers

to access 10 leading crypto currency trading platforms through

the Conio App, the companies said. Customers will be able to

instantly transfer any bitcoin they buy on the exchanges into

their Conio wallet, rather than having to scan a QR code or go

through other measures as at present.

Conio is backed by Italian postal service Poste Italiane

and asset manager Banca Generali.

By using open banking technology which allows the sharing of

financial data, a single Mesh account can authenticate users

into more than 300 centralized crypto exchanges and self-custody

wallets.

Conio currently only provides custody services for digital

assets such as bitcoin.

"With our partnership with Conio, we are deploying the

infrastructure to make safe and seamless aggregation and crypto

transfers possible for hundreds of thousands of users in the

region," Mesh founder Bam Azizi said.

Conio said a study by crypto industry association Adan and

consultancy KPMG showed that two thirds of Italians who have

purchased cryptocurrencies store their bitcoin on the exchanges

they used to buy them, rather than having personal wallets.

The Italian figure is similar to 63% in France's or 69% in

Britain, Conio said, adding it was necessary to increase

awareness regarding digital asset safety.

Conio has developed a system that would keep users'

crypto assets safe even if the company itself ceased to exist,

Conio General Manager Orlando Merone told Reuters.

The collapse of leading crypto exchange FTX in 2022

inflicted billions of dollars of losses on its customers.

PayPal Ventures is PayPal's ( PYPL ) global corporate

venture arm and invests in promising start-ups in fields that

are of interest for the U.S. payments company.