Singapore bank DBS working for expansion of Bitcoin trading to retail
Singapore’s largest bank, DBS Bank, is reportedly working to expand its cryptocurrency exchange beyond its current investor base made of institutional clients.
DBS Bank’s CEO Piyush Gupta has recently spoken about the bank’s cryptocurrency business during the Q4 2021 earnings call on February 14, Monday, where he stated that the company would be focusing on measures to further scale its crypto exchange operations in the upcoming months in 2022.
During the call, Gupta had been asked whether DBS Bank has a proper roadmap for rolling out digital asset trading to its retail investors. Although the CEO did not give a straightforward reply, he said that DBS Bank had initiated some work for the expansion of its current investor base.
Gupta highlighted that the bank had started doing the work to note how they could get through “in a sensible way” and expand it beyond its current investor base, which includes the bank’s appropriate thinking in the direction towards potential fraud.
Gupta also hinted that DBS Bank would not be able to proceed with retail support for its crypto exchange before completing the expansion work, as the team is expected to finalize related developments by 2022.
According to Gupta, DBS Bank is also expecting to significantly boost its crypto trading platform either in the first half or in the first three quarters of 2022. The bank has specific plans of making access to digital assets “a lot more convenient” by allowing instant online deposits and transactions that do not have to rely much on banking intermediaries.
Gupta also added that what happens is that people think they have got 24/7, but the customers do need to call and speak to bankers. Hence, the first deal for the bank is to make it “all online, self-service,” and “instant” so that the internal processes are robust enough to support the live transactions.
DBS Bank has made massive progress towards the crypto industry in recent years, the most prominent being setting up its own institutional-grade crypto exchange in December 2020. The company has also been actively extending the range of supported digital asset services on the exchange by launching a crypto trust solution in May 2021.
In August 2021, DBS Bank’s brokerage arm, DBS Vickers, had also been granted approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore for providing digital payment token services as a payment institution.
