In October 2025, Standard Chartered rolled out its existing crypto service for large investors across the European Economic Area. It is the first global systemically important bank to formalize such an arrangement in Europe, structuring the service so that licensed custody and licensed trading are kept in separate hands.
The split lowers the risk of an exchange collapse wiping out client assets and gives institutions a legal door into Europe’s crypto market under MiCA, offering a ready-made route for asset managers, corporate treasuries and custodians that require bank-grade rules.
The service links Standard Chartered’s own custody arm with OKX’s European licence, which already covers a range of activities under MiCA. The heart of the model is OKX’s “collateral mirror”: coins sit in a bank vault under the bank’s control while an identical balance appears on the exchange screen and can be traded instantly. Legal title never leaves the bank and the coins do not travel onto the exchange’s books, so the client is not exposed if the exchange runs into trouble.
Deal structure and partners
Margaret Harwood-Jones, who heads Financing besides Securities Services at Standard Chartered, said the goal is to pair the bank’s custody record with OKX’s licence so that European institutions receive security and compliance checks that match any other asset class.
Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe, added that the licence and the partnership give institutions the confidence to commit money without fear of regulatory surprises. Star Xu, global CEO of OKX, framed the effort as “years of real work — local licences, more than five hundred compliance staff and alliances with banks such as Standard Chartered”.
The agreement touches products, rules and uptake across the region. Custody and trade execution are kept apart, reducing the chance of loss from an exchange failure, while providing a live template for other giant banks that may wish to link their own custody units to a licensed European exchange. KYC and AML teams will need to track money as it moves between the bank vault and the trading screen, and the fully licensed path may draw more institutional money into tokenised assets and spot crypto markets.
The October 2025 launch across the EEA stands as a practical and regulatory landmark, proving that a global bank vault alongside a licensed exchange can share the workload while giving institutions a legal on-ramp. Open questions remain on how many other G-SIBs will follow and how quickly back-office teams can align KYC, AML and reconciliation between the two sides.
