Standard Chartered announced on Monday that its non-binding offer to acquire Zodia Custody – the digital asset manager it co-founded in 2020 through its SC Ventures technology – has been accepted by Zodia’s shareholders and underwriters.
The agreement, subject to regulatory approval, will result in the retention of Zodia’s management services. Profile of Standard Chartered existing business of Financing and Securities Services. The sale is less of a formal acquisition than a strategic restructuring: the parent bank is taking back a customer-facing business it has long developed, now that the market has grown enough to justify direct ownership.
Zodia was established along with Northern Trust in late 2020, when legal uncertainty and reputational risk made it prudent for Standard Chartered to try to hold crypto through another entity. Over time, the manager attracted a few investors including SBI Holdings, National Australia Bank, and Emirates NBD, building operations in seven offices in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This design served its purpose – but it also created repeats.
Standard Chartered combines storage, infrastructure management
Standard Chartered has developed its digital asset management capabilities within the Corporate and Investment Bank, running two asset management solutions that support a wide range of clients.
The discovery eliminates that need. By integrating Zodia’s portfolio into its Financing and Securities Services division, Standard Chartered gains a unified customer base, eliminates functional overlap, and positions itself as one of the leading global banks with a well-integrated, well-managed crypto offering.
His colleagues have moved in one direction: BNY Mellon he started its Digital Asset Custody platform in 2022, and Morgan Stanley requested the permission of the national bank in early 2026 to bring crypto custody within the regulated bank.
What’s left of Zodia is probably the most important part of this sale. The company’s infrastructure – the technology that allows other financial institutions to create and use digital services – will be separated into a new group called Zodia Solutions, which will sit under SC Ventures.
Julian Sawyer, CEO of Zodia, will lead the new business. Zodia Solutions will work as a support for banking infrastructure, mainly as a SaaS platform for institutions that want to enter the digital economy without building the infrastructure pipeline themselves. Standard Chartered will be a client, as will other banks. Few existing investors remain in the future discussions of the new company.
A split indicates real stress in the market. Institutional customers increasingly want to save money in a regulated bank, not a fintech company. But those same institutions also need the right technology infrastructure to leverage their digital assets – and that infrastructure is more important as a shared service than locked within a single bank.
The digital asset storage market currently exceeds $1 trillion in assets and is expected to reach $7 trillion by 2035, growing at an annual rate of approximately 24%. Standard Chartered is positioning itself to compete in the direct custody and infrastructure contracts that will define the growth – a two-way street that this makes clear for the first time.
The deal is close to being signed off, with no expected disruption to Zodia’s existing customers at this time.
