Standard Chartered has become the first Global Systemically Important Bank to offer institutional Bitcoin and Ether spot trading in the United Arab Emirates, extending a service it first introduced through its UK branch in July 2025, . The offering runs through the bank’s Dubai International Financial Centre-regulated entity and went live on 3 September 2026.
Rola Abu Manneh, Standard Chartered’s chief executive for the UAE, Middle East and Pakistan, said:
“Extending our Bitcoin and Ether spot trading capability to institutional clients is a significant step in broadening our regulated digital asset proposition in the market.”
How the Bitcoin and Ether trading works
Eligible institutional clients trade deliverable spot Bitcoin (BTC/USD) and Ether (ETH/USD) through Standard Chartered’s existing electronic trading channels, the same foreign exchange interfaces they already use, rather than a separate crypto-specific platform. Deliverable means clients take actual ownership of the underlying asset, rather than trading a derivative or a cash-settled contract referencing its price. The offering runs through Standard Chartered DIFC, regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA).
Settlement runs through a custodian of the client’s choice, which can include Standard Chartered’s own digital asset custody service in the UAE. That service has its own, separate history: it launched on 10 September 2024, after the bank signed a memorandum of understanding with the DFSA in May 2023.
Its inaugural client was Brevan Howard Digital, the crypto and digital asset arm of hedge fund Brevan Howard. Gautam Sharma, chief executive of Brevan Howard Digital, said at the time: “This is a significant win for the UAE and the wider digital asset industry,” a remark made about the custody service’s 2024 launch rather than this week’s trading announcement.
Part of a wider digital asset build-out
The UAE launch is the latest piece of a broader Standard Chartered digital asset strategy built across several separately run ventures. Zodia Markets, the bank-backed institutional trading venue, already offers spot Bitcoin and Ether trading with non-deliverable forwards in development. , incubated by SC Ventures out of Singapore, focuses on tokenising real-world assets such as treasuries, bonds, funds and commodities. Zodia Custody handles safekeeping for the group. Together, the three are designed to give institutional clients custody, trading and tokenisation under one banking relationship rather than three separate vendors.
In June 2026, Standard Chartered entered a banking agreement with CoinMENA, a regional crypto exchange, to support fiat on- and off-ramps and virtual account-based transaction management, a separate move that gave the bank more regional infrastructure around digital assets ahead of this trading launch.
Standard Chartered was also the first G-SIB to offer institutional spot trading in both cryptocurrencies when it launched the service through its UK branch in July 2025. The UAE now becomes the second market where the bank runs the same offering, though neither Standard Chartered nor the DIFC has disclosed trading volumes, client numbers or a minimum ticket size since the UK service went live.
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