DBS Bank Acquires Regulatory Approval to Provide Crypto Services in Singapore
- The brokerage arm of the bank, DBS Vickers, was granted an in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore on Thursday.
- The bank also revealed that its crypto exchange, DBS Digital Exchange, will start operating 24/7 starting Monday.
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DBS Vickers, the brokerage arm of Singaporean DBS Bank, has received an “in principle” approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to provide crypto services to companies and managers, the bank said in a press release on 12 August.
According to the announcement, the in-principle approval was granted under Singapore’s Payment Services Act, enabling DBS to provide digital payment token services to payment institutions. Once fully licensed, the bank will be able to provide asset managers and companies with crypto trading through its cryptocurrency exchange, DBS Digital Exchange (DDEx). The head of capital markets at DBS, Eng-Kwok Seat Moey, said in a statement:
“We are confident of doubling our investor base by the end of the year. This bodes well for our ability to provide integrated solutions across the digital asset value chain notably in the form of STOs, leveraging DBS’ expertise in deal origination to tokenisation, listing, distribution, trading and custody. This will contribute to Singapore’s ambitions to be a digital asset hub in Asia.”
The bank also announced that starting Monday DDEx will begin operating 24/7, enabling investors to trade at any time, opposed to its previous Asian trading hours work schedule. The exchange was launched back in 2020, and currently provides crypto trading services only to institutional investors, who have access to Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Bitcoin Cash.
DBS is now one of the few financial institutions to acquire an in-principal approval from MAS, and will now work on meeting the other MAS requirements. In fact, it has been a little over a week since MAS issued its first in-principle approval, with its recipient being Australian crypto exchange Independent Reserve.
- The requirement to deposit customer assets into a statutory trust comes as a result of a MAS public consultation from October 2022 focused on reducing risk in crypto trading.
- Singapore’s central bank also restricted crypto firms from facilitating lending and staking to retail customers, though the services are still available to institutional clients.
Monetary Authority of Singapore building. The Straits Times
- Crypto.com has once again expanded its regulatory achievements with the acquisition of a major payment institution license for digital payment token services in Singapore.
- The license, for which the company received an in-principle approval last June, enables the exchange to provide a greater range of payment services in Singapore.
- The Monetary Authority of Singapore successfully completed a cross-currency transaction using DeFi technology as part of its Project Guardian initiative.
- Singapore’s DBS Bank, Japan’s SBI Digital, and J.P. Morgan all participated in the trials that were conducted on the Polygon blockchain.