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Cryptocurrency firm Sygnum is seeking a banking license in Singapore, after recently securing such in Switzerland.
As per a report by Bloomberg, co-founders Mathias Imbach and Gerald Goh revealed that Sygnum is in talks with regulators for a capital markets services license that will allow the firm to provide asset management services.
“In order for us to provide a full suite of services, we need to operate as a bank” in the island nation, Goh noted.
Goh, who is also the company’s chief strategy officer, said that its Singapore license application will get underway as soon as it becomes a fully-fledged Swiss bank later this year.
The services it would be able to offer include custodial services for Bitcoin and Ethereum and conversions between the two cryptocurrencies and Swiss francs, Singapore dollars, U.S. dollars, and Euros. It will also provide digital asset custody, brokerage, and tokenization services for eligible investors and institutions.
“We have been approached over the past few months by many parties who hold a lot of cryptocurrencies and look for a fully regulated bank. One of their biggest challenges is to find banking specialists to connect them to the real world, to pay their taxes, their employees’ salary,” Imbach said.
In addition, Imbach said that the company is concentrating on conducting robust due diligence on all new potential clients to ensure compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) protocols while awaiting regulatory approval.
Sygnum has secured roughly 60 million Swiss francs ($61 million), including investments from Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. All board directors and around 85% of the firm’s employees also own a stake in the firm. Chua Kimg Leng, the former special advisor for financial supervision at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, is also a member of the company’s board and the head of its internal AML committee.
In March, Sygnum entered into a partnership with German stock exchange operator Deutsche Börse Group and Swisscom, a Swiss Information and Communication Technology (ICT) company, to develop a new digital asset ecosystem. The core elements of the solution include issuance, custody, access to liquidity, and banking services – all leveraging Distributed-Ledger-Technology (DLT) in a regulatory compliant environment.
