Standard Chartered to expand institutional crypto and RWA custody to Singapore
The bank would offer the service to institutions and accredited corporate investors, subject to regulatory requirements.
Standard Chartered plans to offer custody in Singapore for selected cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets, expanding a digital asset business that already reaches financial hubs including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Luxembourg and Hong Kong.
The service, which remains subject to applicable regulatory requirements, would be available to institutional clients and accredited investor corporate clients, the bank said Thursday. It would sit within Standard Chartered’s financing and securities-services business rather than operate as a retail crypto product.
“Secure and regulated custody is a critical foundation of the digital asset ecosystem,” Ole Matthiessen, Standard Chartered’s global head of transaction services and digital assets, said in a statement. “As client demand continues to grow, we will continue investing in our digital assets capabilities across key financial centers.”
The move is not a first for a global bank. BNY, for example, expanded its digital-asset custody platform to include USDC custody and minting, and later added staking.
However, it does expand Standard Chartered’s custody offering to Singapore, one of Asia’s key wealth-management and digital-asset centers, and explicitly covers stablecoins and tokenized assets alongside crypto.
Standard Chartered has been building the business through its custody arm, Zodia. The bank agreed in May to acquire the rest of Zodia Custody, a firm it founded with Northern Trust, and last month began offering institutional spot bitcoin and ether trading through its Dubai branch’s foreign-exchange platform.
In Singapore, the bank said the planned custody service would support clients across the wider asset lifecycle, from safeguarding traditional assets to issuing and holding tokenized versions of those assets.
Patrick Lee, Standard Chartered’s Singapore chief executive, said the bank sees rising institutional demand for trusted infrastructure to move and safeguard tokenized assets. The announcement did not identify which crypto assets, stablecoins or tokenized products it expects to support, nor did it say when the service will begin.
As stablecoins move into regulated finance, APAC is becoming a key proving ground. This report maps the region’s rules, use cases, and RLUSD’s role.
Asanat Analysis — Why it matters
Standard Chartered's custody expansion signals accelerating institutional adoption of digital assets in Asia-Pacific, where regulatory clarity has lagged North America and Europe. Singapore's progressive MAS framework—which licensed 10+ digital asset platforms in 2024-25—creates a jurisdictional advantage for bank-led custody solutions. This move follows similar plays by traditional custodians (Fidelity, BNY Mellon) and reflects maturation beyond retail volatility into enterprise treasury and fund management use cases.
RWA custody specifically matters: it indicates tokenized real-world assets (bonds, commodities, equities) are graduating from pilot to production. Banks integrating RWA custody signal confidence that regulatory and technical standards are solidifying. For Singapore, this positions the city-state as a hub competing with Dubai and Hong Kong for Asia's institutional crypto infrastructure, potentially attracting regional pension funds and family offices into on-chain asset management.