DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, plans to introduce crypto trading for retail investors this year, according to the firm’s CEO. DBS would focus on making “access to digital assets a lot more convenient” in the first half of this year, he said.
DBS Bank Overview
DBS Bank Limited is a Singaporean international banking and financial services organization with its headquarters in the Marina Bay Financial Centre in Singapore’s Marina Bay neighborhood.
The Development Bank of Singapore Limited, from which the abbreviated name “DBS” was formed, was the company’s full name before the shorter name was adopted on July 21, 2003, to represent its function as a worldwide bank.
Along with OCBC Bank and United Overseas Bank, it is one of Singapore’s three “megabanks” (UOB). The bank, which is listed on the Singapore Exchange, was established by the Singapore government on 16 July 1968 to take over the Economic Development Board’s industrial lending activities.
Retail Customers Will Be Able to Trade Cryptocurrencies at DBS Bank
DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank by assets, plans to provide cryptocurrency trading to individual customers this year.
Given the expansion in the digital asset market, CEO Piyush Gupta was questioned during the bank’s fourth-quarter earnings call Monday if DBS has any plans to extend its digital asset exchange and if there is a strategy for rolling out digital asset trading for individual investors.
Gupta responded
In the first half of the first two quarters of this year, we’ll focus on making digital asset access much more convenient.
“Today, what occurs is that you have 24/7, yet clients still need to contact and chat with bankers,” he explained. So the first order of business is to put everything online, to make it self-service, to make it quick, and to ensure that the internal procedures are strong enough to sustain it.”
“At the same time, we’ve started working on understanding how we can, in a sensible way, take it out and expand it outside the accredited investor base,” the DBS CEO said. And that means making sure we’re thinking about things like suitability, fraud risk, and so forth.”
The DBS CEO went on to say:
Nonetheless, I believe it will be the end of the year before we can truly bring something to market by the time we nail down all of these details.
In December 2020, DBS Bank started a cryptocurrency exchange. In May of last year, the bank introduced a cryptocurrency trust service, followed by the introduction of its first security token offering.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the country’s central bank, has also approved the bank’s brokerage arm to provide crypto services.