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Singapore-based lender DBS (SGX: D05) is considering to expand its digital asset trading facility to retail customers by the end of this year, the CEO revealed on Monday in an earnings call. Currently, the crypto services of the bank are only limited to institutional clients. “We are starting the initial work to expand it beyond the current investor base,” DBS CEO Piyush Gupta announced. DBS posted a record net profit of $6.81 billion for the financial year 2021.
DBS is looking to launch retail crypto services by the end of the year.
“We are starting the initial work to expand it beyond the current investor base,” DBS CEO Piyush Gupta said. “Lots of work to do with suitability and anti-fraud… we should have something by the end of the year.” However, details of the bank’s retail crypto trading services are not known yet. DBS became one of the first mainstream lenders to adopt cryptocurrencies by offering trading services to institutional clients in early 2021. However, it is still a legacy approach as clients need to call the bank to place a crypto trading order.
The bank is initially focused on digitizing its crypto services.
The Singapore-based bank initially focused on digitizing its crypto services to make them more accessible in the first half of the ongoing year. Its focus on crypto can also be seen as it made its crypto trading desk available around the clock. Initially, the services were only available during Singapore banking hours. Meanwhile, demand for DBS’s crypto services has also exploded since the launch of its services. In an interview with Coindesk, DBS Digital Exchange (DDEx) CEO Lionel Lim revealed that the platform handled $819 million as the yearly trading volume in 2021, out of which $595.5 million worth of cryptos were traded in the final quarter of the year.
