MidChains Signs Standard Chartered for Fiat Settlement and Client Accounts
The UAE-licensed platform will use Standard Chartered's banking infrastructure for fiat settlement, segregated client money accounts and correspondent banking.
MidChains FZE, a digital asset platform based in the UAE, has signed a strategic banking partnership with Standard Chartered covering fiat settlement, segregated client money accounts and correspondent banking. The arrangement is meant to connect the platform's institutional digital asset business to conventional financial infrastructure, so that cash and assets can move between the two under one set of banking arrangements.
Standard Chartered will supply the banking infrastructure that sits behind MidChains' daily operations and its settlements. MidChains holds a licence from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority for broker-dealer services, and it serves retail, institutional and qualified investors from its base in the UAE.
Rola Abu Manneh, chief executive for the UAE, Middle East and Pakistan at Standard Chartered, said the country has become one of the world's leading regulatory environments for digital assets and a global centre for financial activity. The partnership, she said, puts that opportunity into practice, with the bank providing fiat settlement, segregated client money accounts and correspondent banking to a licensed local platform.
Basil Al Askari, chief executive of MidChains, described the requirement from the trading side. Institutional capital moves continuously between traditional and digital markets, he said, and the infrastructure supporting those flows has to keep pace with them. Institutional investors, he added, need digital asset services that are connected to the banking system carrying their wider activity, rather than sitting apart from it.
Both firms describe the deal as a way to ease the movement of capital between traditional financial markets and digital asset platforms. Institutional clients are to gain access to established banking services through the tie-up.
MidChains has operated as a regulated digital asset company since 2019 and is headquartered in the UAE. Its services include institutional over-the-counter execution, regulated conversion between fiat and crypto in both directions, and stablecoin-enabled corporate treasury execution and cross-border settlement.
Its investors include Mubadala Investment Company, Lunate, MIAX Exchange Group, Brevan Howard, GSR, Emurgo, Dhabi Holdings and Ava Labs.
The tie-up reflects broader efforts in the UAE to integrate regulated digital asset services with traditional banking infrastructure, as financial institutions and digital asset firms look for ways to support institutional participation in the sector. Segregated client money accounts and correspondent banking are the pieces that decide how cash enters and leaves a trade, which is why they sit at the centre of this arrangement rather than at its edges.
