Standard Chartered Opens Crypto Trading to Affluent Clients in the UAE
The bank becomes the first international lender in the UAE to offer Bitcoin and Ether trading inside its own platform, starting with Professional Investor clients.
Karim El-Sayed Karim El-Sayed covers company news, policy and regulation across the UAE and wider MENA for Anecdoted, with a focus on how new rules and licences reshape how startups operate. karim@anecdoted.com
Standard Chartered has started letting affluent clients in the United Arab Emirates trade cryptocurrencies through their existing bank accounts, buying and selling Bitcoin and Ether without opening a wallet elsewhere. The bank calls the service a global first for the institution and the first offering of its kind by an international bank in the UAE.
The capability is run jointly by the bank's Wealth and Retail Banking and Corporate and Investment Banking businesses, working with Zodia Markets, which is backed by SC Ventures. It operates under a licence from the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA).
Approved clients trade inside the bank's own systems rather than through a third-party exchange. Standard Chartered manages custody and settlement end to end under a closed-loop model, which the bank says cuts exposure to the risks attached to outside wallets. Digital assets are held through a banking relationship clients already have, under the governance and oversight the bank applies to their other holdings.
Who gets access first
Professional Investor clients in the UAE are the first group eligible. The bank has said it intends to extend the offering to other markets over time.
Ayesha Abbas, Managing Director and Head of Affluent and Wealth Solutions, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and UAE at Standard Chartered, pointed to the UAE's "strong regulatory leadership and forward-looking approach to innovation" as a reason the bank picked the country for the service's first global rollout. The offering, she said, gives eligible clients "a simple and familiar way to access Bitcoin and Ethereum directly through their existing banking relationship," adding an option that complements wider portfolios while keeping the governance and oversight standards those clients expect from the bank.
strong regulatory leadership and forward-looking approach to innovation
Samir Subberwal, Global Head, Wealth Solutions, Retail Products, Data and Analytics, said growing client interest in digital assets made the launch a significant step for the bank as it folds them into its core wealth offering. Clients are asking for security and confidence that come with investing through a regulated institution, he said, and the bank is still building products for a market that continues to evolve.
Part of a wider digital assets push
The trading service sits inside a broader proposition assembled across the two banking divisions, spanning custody, trading and tokenisation, and extended through the bank's ventures ecosystem by Zodia Markets and Libeara.
Clients already had indirect routes into the asset class. Standard Chartered offers cryptocurrency ETFs through its cash equities trading platform, and eligible clients can take market exposure through structured products and over-the-counter derivatives.
The bank frames the additions as a response to demand from its clients for regulated digital assets infrastructure and services, as digital assets draw wider institutional adoption and regulators in several markets clarify the rules around them.
Buying and selling Bitcoin and Ether directly through the bank's own platform is now the most direct route Standard Chartered offers, and the first time an international bank in the UAE has opened one.
