Standard Chartered is considering pulling its crypto custody unit, Zodia Custody, out of its SC Ventures subsidiary structure and placing it inside the bank's Corporate and Investment Bank division, according to Bloomberg, as reported by The Block on April 8, 2026. If confirmed, the move would mark a significant structural shift for one of the most geographically expansive bank-backed digital asset custodians operating across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

No final decision has been announced. Standard Chartered has not publicly confirmed the integration is proceeding.

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Zodia Custody was conceived in late 2018 and co-founded in 2021 by SC Ventures, Standard Chartered's innovation arm, alongside Northern Trust. Standard Chartered now holds roughly 90% of the company following a $36 million Series A round in April 2023, led by Japan's SBI Holdings. Total funding raised stands at approximately $68.4 million, according to PitchBook data.

The company currently operates across seven cities, London, Dublin, Luxembourg, Sydney, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo, as well as the UAE. It supports 38 digital assets as of late 2023, including Bitcoin, Ether, USDT, and USDC, and claims to be the first custodian to support the AUDM stablecoin. Moving the entity into the Corporate and Investment Bank (CIB) division would effectively end its status as a separately structured subsidiary of SC Ventures and fold its regulated custody functions into Standard Chartered's mainstream banking operations.

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The potential integration fits a broader pattern in Standard Chartered's digital asset strategy: building new capabilities through the SC Ventures incubation model and graduating the most commercially mature units into core banking infrastructure. The bank launched deliverable spot crypto trading for institutional clients, covering BTC/USD and ETH/USD pairs, in July 2025, becoming the first global systemically important bank (G-SIB) to offer the service. It added direct-bank crypto custody in the UAE in September 2024, Luxembourg in January 2025, and Hong Kong in January 2026. Standard Chartered CFO Pete Burrill named Zodia Custody, Zodia Markets, and the bank's Libeara tokenization platform as key strategic priorities at a March 2026 conference, noting the bank entered the year with a 2025 return on tangible equity of 14.7%, ahead of its 13% three-year target by a full year.

Two regulatory changes have also cleared the way for this kind of structural shift. The US Securities and Exchange Commission repealed SAB 121, an accounting rule that in recent years had required banks to record customer crypto holdings as liabilities on their own balance sheets. The US GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025, established a federal framework for stablecoins. Both changes reduced the capital-adequacy concerns that had previously made full bank-level crypto integration complicated.

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For institutional clients across Africa and South Asia, the practical implications of a CIB integration could be substantial. Sub-Saharan Africa recorded more than $54 billion in stablecoin transactions between mid-2024 and mid-2025, representing about 43% of the continent's total crypto transaction value. Nigeria alone accounted for roughly $22 billion in stablecoin flows in the 12 months through June 2024, driven largely by dollar scarcity and currency devaluation. Standard Chartered holds active banking licenses in more than 15 African markets, including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, and South Africa. A CIB-integrated custody offering would allow corporate clients in those markets to access regulated digital asset custody through their existing banking relationships, rather than through a separate venture-grade entity.

Zodia's own research frames Africa's digital asset adoption as utility-driven, with businesses using stablecoins to solve currency instability and limited access to hard currency, not primarily for capital market speculation. Regulatory frameworks are also taking shape: South Africa's Financial Sector Conduct Authority has issued crypto VASP licences; Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission has established a licensing regime; and Kenya's framework is expected to advance further through 2026.

In South Asia, SBI Holdings flagged the region as a target market for Zodia's expansion, alongside the Middle East and Africa, when it led the Series A round. India in particular represents a growing demand base, with foreign institutional investors and large family offices seeking regulated custody access as SEBI and the Reserve Bank of India maintain cautious but evolving positions on digital assets.

The UAE represents Zodia's most operationally advanced non-European jurisdiction. Standard Chartered launched direct-bank crypto custody there in September 2024, and Zodia deepened its regional presence through the acquisition of Tungsten in June 2025, securing licensing under the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) framework and advancing toward approval under Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). A CIB integration would position that existing regulatory infrastructure within Standard Chartered's institutional banking operations across the Gulf.

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Standard Chartered is also pursuing a stablecoin licence from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), with Zodia involved in that application. The bank treats Hong Kong as a regulatory beachhead for broader Asia-Pacific distribution, and confirmed institutional banking clients in the region include OKX institutional and FalconX. The bank's own research, published in October 2025, projects the global stablecoin market cap could grow from roughly $300 billion as of late 2025 to $2 trillion by approximately 2028, and puts tokenized real-world assets (financial instruments and other assets represented as tokens on a blockchain) on a similar trajectory, reaching $2 trillion by 2028 from approximately $35 billion in late 2025.

Zodia expanded further in March 2026 by integrating credit infrastructure from Programmable Credit Protocol to enable secured lending against custodied digital assets, a product category that arguably fits more naturally inside a corporate bank's service offering than inside a standalone venture entity.

Bringing Zodia fully into the CIB structure would place Standard Chartered's proprietary custody offering in more direct competition with third-party custodians serving the same institutional client base across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.