DBS, the largest financial services operator in Singapore, is on track to expand its Bitcoin trading services to its retail customers, a wildly divergent position from its plans when it made its debut into the nascent digital currency world.
In the last quarterly earnings call from the bank, Piyush Gupta, the CEO, noted that the bank is exploring avenues to expand its investor base beyond the professionals allowed to trade BTC on its platform.
“We’ve started doing the work on seeing how we get in a sensible way, take it out, and expand it beyond the current investor base. And that includes making sure we appropriate thinking about things like potential fraud and others,” Gupta said when asked whether DBS Bank has a roadmap for rolling out digital asset trading to retail investors.
Background works must be put in place to provide retail trading services, especially when it is in a highly volatile industry like cryptocurrencies. Gupta submitted that the bank plans to offer the retail services in as much of a decentralized manner as possible.
In all, DBS bank plans to “make the access to the digital assets a lot more convenient” by enabling instant online deposits and transactions without relying much on banking intermediaries.
“What happens is that you’ve got 24/7, but the customers still need to call and speak to bankers. So the first order is to make it all online, make it self-service, make it instant, and make sure the internal processes are robust to be able to support that,” the CEO added in the earnings call.
It is not uncommon to find traditional banks wading into the digital currency ecosystem. Based on the volatility of crypto and the regulation of banks, the pioneering financial services provider are often known to restrict the trading of coins by retailers or customers that are not classified as high net worth individuals. With DBS planning these pushes, finding others to follow will not come as a surprise.
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