Standard Chartered to acquire Zodia Custody's custody business. Source: Standard Chartered
Margaret Harwood-Jones, global head of financing and securities services at Standard Chartered, said in the release that the deal would accelerate the growth of Standard Chartered’s global digital asset custody portfolio.
The companies said they do not expect the transaction to disrupt existing custody clients, who will continue to receive services as usual.
A Standard Chartered spokesperson declined to comment further.
In April, Bloomberg reported that Standard Chartered was considering bringing parts of Zodia Custody in-house by merging the custody business into an existing division, while leaving Zodia to operate as a software-as-a-service platform.
The announcement formalizes that strategy amid a broader push by major banks to secure trust bank charters and other regulatory structures to custody crypto directly for clients.
BNY Mellon, for example, launched its Digital Asset Custody platform in the US as far back as 2022, enabling selected clients to hold and transfer Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) alongside traditional assets on a single platform.
In February 2026, Morgan Stanley applied for a US de novo national trust bank charter. The charter would allow it to custody certain digital assets for clients within a bank-regulated framework.
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