Standard Chartered has launched direct Bitcoin and Ethereum trading for its affluent clients in the United Arab Emirates, a move the British lender is calling a global first and the first crypto trading offering from an international bank in the UAE.

The bank announced on Wednesday that the service went live after receiving licensing approval from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), set up in 2022 as the world's first regulator dedicated exclusively to virtual assets. Eligible clients classified as Professional Investors — the bank's designation for qualifying wealthy customers — can now buy and sell BTC and ETH straight from their existing bank accounts, eliminating the need to rely on separate wallets or third-party platforms, according to the bank.

Trades are executed entirely within the bank's own ecosystem, with Standard Chartered handling custody and settlement end-to-end through what it calls a closed-loop model — an arrangement the bank says reduces clients' exposure to third-party wallet risk. The product was built across the bank's Wealth and Retail Banking and Corporate and Investment Banking units in partnership with Zodia Markets, a digital asset trading firm backed by Standard Chartered's venture arm, SC Ventures.

Standard Chartered said it plans to extend the offering to other markets, though it gave no timeline, and any rollout would need to clear the regulatory approvals of each new jurisdiction, as the Dubai launch did with VARA. The launch brings digital assets into the bank's core wealth offering for the first time, marking a shift from its earlier institution-only approach to crypto trading.

“As client interest in digital assets continues to grow, this launch represents a significant milestone for Standard Chartered as we bring digital assets into our core wealth offering,” said Samir Subberwal, the bank's global head of wealth solutions, retail products, data and analytics. He argued that clients now want more than access, and are looking for the security that comes with buying through a regulated institution.

Rola Abu Manneh, Standard Chartered's CEO for the UAE, Middle East and Pakistan, said the country was a natural choice given its regulatory environment and its role as one of the bank's four global wealth hubs.

Until now, Standard Chartered's crypto trading business had catered exclusively to institutions. In July 2025, it became the first global systemically important bank — one of the lenders regulators consider too big to fail — to offer spot trading in Bitcoin and Ethereum to institutional clients, through its U.K. branch. It brought that institutional desk to the UAE last month through its unit in the Dubai International Financial Centre, which is overseen by a different regulator, the Dubai Financial Services Authority.

The bank's crypto custody service had already gone live in the UAE in September 2024, and followed in the European Union through a Luxembourg entity a few months later.

Wealth clients previously had only indirect routes into crypto at the bank: crypto exchange-traded funds available on its cash equities platform, structured products, and over-the-counter derivatives tied to crypto prices. The new service lets them own the coins themselves, held by the bank, rather than a product that merely tracks their price.

Standard Chartered has historically been bullish toward crypto, with its analysts frequently calling for Bitcoin to extend to new highs. In June, Geoff Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital asset research, declared the crypto winter over after Bitcoin slid to nearly $59,000 — a 53% drop from its October 2025 peak of $126,000. The bank has held onto a $100,000 year-end target for BTC.