Standard Chartered has signed definitive agreements to buy 100% of Zodia Custody, the institutional crypto custodian it set up with Northern Trust in 2020, the bank said in a statement dated Wednesday 21 October 2026. The buyer is Standard Chartered I H Limited. The deal is signed but not closed: it still needs regulatory approvals and the usual closing conditions. Neither side gave a price, a closing date or the names of the regulators involved.
The agreements follow a non-binding offer that Zodia’s shareholders and noteholders accepted in May. Once the deal completes, Zodia’s regulated custody business moves inside the bank, and its software arm leaves for a new company called Zodia Solutions, backed by a group of bank investors. The bank says it expects no disruption for clients: existing Zodia Custody clients “continue to be serviced as usual”, according to the release.
Wednesday’s step was expected, and it came late. The parties had aimed to sign definitive documents by the end of June and to complete before the end of August, according to crypto.news and Blockonomi. Both dates passed. The bank has not said why.
Zodia Custody and Standard Chartered: what was signed on 21 October
The structure is set out in a few lines. Standard Chartered I H Limited will acquire all of Zodia Custody Limited, the parent of Zodia’s regulated operating companies in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and Luxembourg.
After completion, the custody business will be folded into the custody of digital assets that Standard Chartered already runs itself, inside its Securities Services business. The release’s company note calls the receiving division Financing and Securities Services. The bank says the move will consolidate its digital asset custody businesses and bring “revenue synergies”, without putting a number on them.
Ying Ying Tan, the bank’s Global Head of Securities Services and Digital Assets, said the purchase “further deepens our digital asset custody portfolio”. She was appointed to both posts on 14 October, a week before the signing, taking over Securities Services from Margaret Harwood-Jones, who became the bank’s chief executive for the UK and Europe.
The release leaves the money out. There is no price and no valuation. There is no target date for closing. The sellers are not named one by one, and nothing says how much each minority holder will receive.
Who owned Zodia Custody, and how the business is split in two
Before this deal, SC Ventures, the bank’s venture arm, held “just under 70%” of Zodia Custody, Ledger Insights reported on 18 May 2026. The rest was spread among outside investors. Northern Trust co-founded the company with Standard Chartered. SBI Holdings of Japan led a $36 million Series A in April 2023, and National Australia Bank and Emirates NBD were also named as shareholders in earlier coverage, including Zodia’s own December 2025 announcement.
The second half of the transaction concerns those same names. Zodia Custody will separate its software and professional services business and move its assets to Zodia Solutions, an independent company to be set up under SC Ventures. Zodia Solutions will sell bank-grade digital asset infrastructure to financial institutions, and Standard Chartered itself will be a client.
The release lists seven backers for Zodia Solutions:
- NAB Ventures Pty Limited, the venture arm of National Australia Bank;
- Northern Trust Corporation;
- SBI Ventures Asset Pte. Ltd;
- Q Studio Restricted Limited, described as Further Ventures;
- Emirates NBD Bank (P.J.S.C.);
- Zodia Investments Limited, described as Investcorp;
- Zodia Holdings Limited, owned by SC Ventures.
When the offer was accepted in May, the bank said Zodia Solutions would be backed by bank investors “including existing Zodia Custody investors”, Ledger Insights reported. The minority banks therefore leave the custody business but keep a foot in the technology company. Whether they hold the same proportions in Zodia Solutions as they did in Zodia Custody is not public.
Craig Perrin, chief executive of Zodia Solutions, said in the release that “financial institutions are moving beyond digital asset pilots towards operating services at scale.”
A new chief executive for the transition
The custody side is now run by Richard Clark, who is named in the release as chief executive of Zodia Custody. He replaced Julian Sawyer, the former Bitstamp chief who had led Zodia since January 2023. In a memo to staff dated 10 September 2026, first reported by CoinDesk, Sawyer said he was handing over day-to-day leadership and moving to an advisory role. Clark, previously chief revenue officer, was put in charge of the custody business through its integration into the bank. Sawyer will also no longer run Zodia Solutions, a role announced for him in May; Perrin and Anoosh Arevshatian lead its build-out.
What is Zodia Custody, and where is it licensed?
Zodia Custody stores crypto assets for institutions: banks, asset managers, corporates. It started inside SC Ventures and was launched with Northern Trust in December 2020. Its office list on its own website reads London, Luxembourg, Abu Dhabi, Sydney and Hong Kong.
The licences are a patchwork, and they are not all of the same weight. Here is what Zodia’s own site shows, checked on 21 October:
| Market | Entity | What it holds | Regulator |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | Zodia Custody Limited | Registration FRN 928347 under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, not full authorisation | FCA |
| European Union (Luxembourg) | Zodia Custody (Europe) S.A. | MiCA crypto-asset service provider N00000006; payment institution Z00000031 | CSSF |
| Hong Kong | Zodia Custody (Hong Kong) Limited | Trust or company service provider licence TC009245, not an SFC virtual asset licence | Companies Registry |
| Abu Dhabi | Tungsten Custody Solutions Ltd (Zodia Abu Dhabi) | Financial Services Permission 220129, virtual asset custody | ADGM FSRA |
The UK registration is an anti-money-laundering registration; Zodia’s page notes that the Financial Ombudsman Service and the FSCS compensation scheme do not apply. In Ireland, Zodia was registered as a virtual asset service provider in August 2022, according to SC Ventures’ announcement at the time; we could not confirm that the registration is still current. The release names regulated entities in Singapore and Australia, but Zodia’s licence list shows no Monetary Authority of Singapore licence and no Australian licence, and we found none elsewhere.
For European clients, the Luxembourg licences matter most. Zodia announced on 12 December 2025 that Luxembourg’s CSSF had granted Zodia Custody (Europe) S.A. its MiCA authorisation, which can be passported to every EU member state. A Luxembourg payment institution licence followed in June 2026, allowing custody and transfer of regulated stablecoins across the EU, crypto.news recalled on Wednesday.
Crypto custody explained: what the bank is buying
For newcomers, custody is the part of crypto nobody sees. Whoever holds the private keys controls the coins. An individual can keep the keys in their own wallet, which is self-custody, or leave them with an exchange or a specialist. Our guide to crypto wallets, custody and how to choose sets out the difference.
Institutions rarely hold keys themselves. A pension fund or a bank needs a custodian that keeps client assets apart from its own and answers to a regulator. That is the service Zodia sells. Buying it gives Standard Chartered the licences, the systems and the clients in one go, instead of applying market by market.
This is an institutional product. Retail customers in the US or Europe cannot open a Zodia account, and nothing in the deal changes how an individual stores bitcoin.
Why buy out the partners now: the Ledger Insights reading
The bank’s release gives one reason: consolidation of its custody businesses and the revenue that should follow. A fuller explanation comes from the trade publication Ledger Insights, not from the bank, and it should be read as the publication’s analysis.
In its 18 May article, Ledger Insights pointed out that Standard Chartered now offers digital asset custody directly, so the bank was competing with its own subsidiary for clients. It also cited licensing work duplicated across the world. And it added that “some banks may also have been reluctant to use a custodian majority owned by a competitor.”
That last point cuts both ways. A custodian wholly inside Standard Chartered is, for a rival bank, a competitor’s service. The neutral, shared part of Zodia survives in Zodia Solutions, the software company that Northern Trust, NAB, SBI and Emirates NBD keep backing. Ledger Insights wrote in May that this structure “addresses the competitive conflict”. The bank has not described it that way.
The bank’s crypto build-out in 2026
The purchase also fits a run of announcements from the bank. On 3 September it extended institutional spot bitcoin and ether trading to the UAE through Standard Chartered DIFC, which it called a first for a global systemically important bank in that market. On 8 October it said it is preparing crypto custody for institutional and accredited investor corporate clients in Singapore, adding to the custody presence it already has in the UAE, Luxembourg and Hong Kong. On 12 October it switched on custody of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin through its DIFC branch. On 14 October it unveiled a bitcoin and ether trading service for affluent clients in the UAE, regulated by Dubai’s VARA, built with SC Ventures-backed Zodia Markets.
Earlier steps date back to July 2025, when the bank opened institutional spot bitcoin and ether trading through its UK branch. In Hong Kong, Anchorpoint Financial, a venture of Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), HKT and Animoca Brands, received one of the first two stablecoin issuer licences from the HKMA on 10 April 2026. No source links that licence to the Zodia deal.
A short history of Zodia, with dates
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| December 2020 | Zodia Custody launched by Standard Chartered (SC Ventures) and Northern Trust |
| August 2022 | Registration as a virtual asset service provider in Ireland |
| January 2023 | Julian Sawyer becomes chief executive |
| April 2023 | $36 million Series A led by SBI Holdings |
| June 2025 | Zodia completes the purchase of Abu Dhabi custodian Tungsten |
| September 2025 | Zodia and SBI end their Japanese custody venture, SBI Zodia Custody |
| 12 December 2025 | MiCA authorisation from Luxembourg’s CSSF |
| 18 May 2026 | Non-binding offer from Standard Chartered accepted by shareholders and noteholders |
| June 2026 | Luxembourg payment institution licence |
| 10 September 2026 | Sawyer hands over to Richard Clark |
| 21 October 2026 | Definitive agreements signed; closing pending |
The Japanese venture was 51% owned by SBI and 49% by Zodia. Bloomberg first reported its end on 11 September 2025, with Sawyer calling it a mutual decision. SBI stayed a Zodia shareholder.
What it means for crypto custody in Europe
The deal puts a MiCA-licensed custodian inside a global systemically important bank. It lands in a busy month for bank custody in Europe. Coindaro reported on 16 October that Deutsche Bank entered the MiCA register and plans its custody launch within weeks, and on 19 October that Qivalis, the euro stablecoin backed by 37 banks, received its Dutch licence.
Read together, these show large banks bringing crypto services under their own balance sheets and licences rather than renting them from specialist firms. That is Coindaro’s reading of the pattern, not a claim made by any of the banks.
For a European institution, the practical question is the licence. Today the MiCA authorisation sits with Zodia Custody (Europe) S.A. in Luxembourg, and it covers clients across the EU through the passport. Our guide to the MiCA regulation explains how that passport works. Whether that Luxembourg licence stays with the same legal entity after closing, moves to a bank entity or needs a new application is not stated anywhere.
In the US, the picture differs. Custody rules are being rewritten at the SEC, which proposed new crypto custody rules for advisers and funds on 1 October. Zodia has no US licence on its list, and the deal does not mention the US.
What is still unknown, and what comes next
Several answers are missing from the bank’s statement and from every report we read:
- The price, the valuation and how much each minority shareholder receives.
- The closing date, the regulators whose approval is needed and why the August target was missed.
- How client assets and contracts move from Zodia’s entities to the bank, beyond the promise of no disruption.
- Zodia’s assets under custody and number of clients, never published.
Bitcoin traded near $84,660 at 16:17 UTC on Wednesday, up about 2.6% over 24 hours, with no move that could be tied to the deal.
The next public step is completion, which the bank will announce once the approvals come in. Until then, Zodia Custody runs as before under Richard Clark, and its licences stay with the same entities.