Singaporean DBS Working on Expanding Bitcoin Trading to Retail
The largest bank in Singapore, DBS Bank is currently catering to only institutional clients via its cryptocurrency exchange. However, according to its chief executive, the bank wants to expand its current investor base, Piyush Gupta, the CEO of DBS Bank, talked about their cryptocurrency business on Monday, during the earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2021. He said that the company was now planning on scaling its crypto exchange operations this year. The CEO was questioned during the call about DBS’s plan of launching digital asset trading for retail investors. Even though the executive did not give a clear answer, he said that the bank had done some work for expanding its customer base.
According to the CEO, they were working on figuring out a sensible way of expanding their existing investor base, which includes taking into account the possibility of things, such as fraud. He hinted that before they completed this work, it wouldn’t be possible for DBS Bank to expand their crypto exchange’s services to retail traders. He expected that the details would be finalized by the end of this year. Gupta said that they would be able to bring something into the market by the end of 2022.
Gupta also added that the bank was also expecting to give its crypto platform a solid boost in the first three quarters of the year. The CEO said that DBS bank plans on making digital asset trading as convenient as possible and would enable instant online transactions and deposits for doing so, thereby eliminating the need for banking intermediaries. Gupta said that even though trading was 24/7, people still have to call and talk to the bankers. Therefore, their first priority is to shift everything online and then make it instant and a self-service. He said that robust internal processes were required in order to accomplish this goal.
As reported previously, recent years have seen the Singaporean bank making some big moves in the crypto industry. In December 2020, DBS Bank had launched its own cryptocurrency exchange for institutional investors and has been working on extending the range of digital asset services it provides on the exchange. Last year in May, the exchange had also launched a crypto trust solution. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) had given approval to DBS Vickers, the brokerage arm of DBS Bank, to offer digital payment token services back in August. It is permitted to operate as a payment institution to offer these services.
Suffice it to say, DBS Bank is making a great deal of progress when it comes to offering crypto services in the country. While it has managed to attract a great deal of institutional investment, it hasn’t yet offered retail trading, which could turn out to be a game-changer for the platform. According to statistics, crypto investments in Singapore had increased 13x in 2021 alone, which indicates just how quickly the crypto space is growing and that there is a massive audience that the bank can tap.
