Between major banks and Crypto, an SGB has emerged

A few years later, the Singapore Gulf Bank initiated by Whampoa obtained a banking license in Bahrain and launched corporate banking services in November 2024. By October 2026, the announcement of SGB's collaboration with Payward revealed that SGB Net's monthly fiat trading volume had exceeded $20 billion.

With "Singapore" in its name, but licensed to operate in Bahrain, a group of individuals with experience from JPMorgan, digital asset banks, and exchanges began to manage banking relationships for crypto and payment institutions.

From the services that were later actually launched, it chose a specific position: to provide accounts for crypto and payment institutions and to allow these accounts to keep pace with the clients' funding delivery rhythm.

1. Bahrain Provides a Base for the Bank Construction Plan

Whampoa laid out its digital asset strategy even before SGB opened.

In September 2022, the group disclosed plans to deploy approximately $100 million to digital asset startups through a venture capital fund. Its digital asset investment division, Whampoa Digital, focuses on early Web3 projects.

In May 2023, Whampoa announced plans to establish a digital bank in Bahrain.

Two months prior, Silvergate halted its SEN service and subsequently announced plans to orderly wind down its banking operations and voluntarily liquidate; Signature Bank was also shut down by regulators. Digital asset institutions still needed to receive and pay in USD, allocate positions, and complete transaction deliveries, but there was a gap in the supply of banking services.

Shawn later explained the banking opportunity, mentioning this kind of misalignment: enterprises were already operating across regions, assets, and currencies, while bank settlements remained fragmented and constrained by processing windows.

Operating its own bank provided SGB with a direct foundation to establish client account relationships. Accounts would receive funds, and the settlement network would connect counterparties, with subsequent services revolving around the clients' use of funds.

The conditions provided by Bahrain can be broken down into three specific parts.

First is regulatory alignment. Shawn emphasized in a 2025 interview that the same local regulatory authority covers banking, capital markets, and digital asset activities, facilitating coordination across financial sectors; this aligns with the role of the Central Bank of Bahrain as a unified regulatory authority.

Second is the client scope. In February 2024, Mumtalakat announced an investment in SGB, stating that the bank had obtained a license from the Central Bank of Bahrain and specifically mentioning the opening of accounts for overseas clients.

Finally, there is local capital and regional positioning. Mumtalakat is Bahrain's sovereign investment institution, and both parties publicly proposed a business direction connecting Asia with the Middle East and North Africa.

Regulation, client access, and local shareholders were thus included in the same bank construction plan. SGB's legal identity is that of a conventional wholesale bank regulated by the Central Bank of Bahrain, with all business conducted within the approved scope.

From the announcement of its establishment to the launch of corporate banking services, a year and a half passed. The bank's team and system construction also progressed during this period.

2. The People Brought In Have Been Doing Institutional Banking

In August 2023, Ali Moosa joined SGB as Executive Vice Chairman.

He worked at JPMorgan for about thirty years, responsible for business in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa before leaving. His historical responsibilities listed in his resume also include Wholesale Payments, Treasury Services, Trade Finance, Institutional Client Relationships, and Regional Governance.

Looking further back, in a 2011 interview, Ali was already discussing how to help Middle Eastern bank clients expand cash management and trade financing through financial institution relationships, and how to collaborate with local banks to supplement services for multinational corporations.

Connecting client needs, bank products, and financial institutions across different markets has been his long-term work.

In January 2024, Edmund Lee was appointed Chairman of SGB. He previously served as Vice Chairman for JPMorgan's Asia Pacific region and Senior Executive in Singapore, and has experience with DBS Vickers.

The financial and operational personnel brought in afterward also have relevant experience: CFO Ali AlShamma previously served as CFO for Goldman Sachs Saudi Arabia and Citigroup Saudi Arabia; COO Elaine Leong was formerly COO of Sygnum and has experience with GIC. The public resume of Institutional Business and Private Banking Head Keith L. includes experience at Binance. The two co-founders, Shawn Chan and Justin Han, have backgrounds in law and investment, respectively.

This group of personnel corresponds to several practical tasks of institutional banking: engaging clients, understanding transactions, withdrawals, and deposits, designing account services, organizing operations, and explaining the business to partner banks.

One particularly important point for SGB is that behind direct clients, there are other clients.

A payment company's incoming funds may be allocated from its own positions or may be settling on behalf of clients; the operating funds of an exchange, along with the client funds it handles, also have different uses. Banks need to understand whose business the accounts are actually handling and what kind of funding activities are taking place.

Those familiar with institutional banking know what questions another bank would ask, and those familiar with digital asset business understand how clients' funds specifically operate. The combination of these two types of experience can help account opening, product design, and daily processing quickly enter the same business language.

This also makes the relationship between team experience and client acquisition more concrete: institutions choosing a bank need someone who understands their work and can turn their needs into continuously available services.

3. First Establish Accounts, Then Make Accounts Useful to Each Other

In November 2024, SGB launched corporate banking services, emphasizing crypto-compatible banking and remote digital account opening. Eligible overseas institutions can establish banking relationships through digital processes.

Before opening, system construction had already begun simultaneously. Shenzhou Information disclosed that it won the bid for SGB's core banking system project, and the Q1 2024 report still mentioned related delivery work.

The bank first needs to record and process balances, then enhance what these accounts can accomplish.

In May 2025, SGB launched SGB Net, providing 24/7, real-time, free transfers within the network. The participants it hopes to attract clearly include exchanges, stablecoin issuers, market makers, OTC, and institutional brokers.

There already exists a flow of funds between these institutions.

According to the usual mechanism for intra-bank transfers, if two institutions hold accounts in the same currency at the same bank, one party pays and the other receives, with the main change being the ownership of the deposit liabilities between clients, without needing to initiate a cross-bank fund transfer.

The value of SGB Net is built on this shared account relationship: placing a portion of the delivery between institutions into a continuously operational banking accounting scope.

Free transfers encourage high-frequency usage. Clients arrange balances to fulfill payment obligations, and after the counterparty receives the funds, they may use them to complete the next transaction. The accounts enter a cycle of repeated turnover, giving the bank opportunities to continue providing cash management, foreign exchange, and conversion services.

Whether the network is user-friendly depends on where the clients' commonly used counterparties are located. When an institution opens an account, it initially increases a banking relationship; when its actual trading counterparties are also brought in, this relationship gains an additional everyday utility.

4. The Client List Begins to Present the Shape of the Network

The client composition exceeded the team's initial expectations.

According to Shawn in a November 2025 interview, the team originally expected that most early clients would come from the crypto industry, but at that time nearly half of the clients were from the traditional payment industry.

The demand brought by payment institutions extends to client fund management, payment identification, and payment operations. Some of the clients and partnerships disclosed by SGB also cover these different uses:

Binance Bahrain: SGB Link, supporting direct USD transfers between eligible client bank accounts and exchange accounts.

OSL: Client fund accounts with SGB Net fiat settlement.

Matrixport / Fly Wing: Client fund accounts, settlement services, and virtual account capabilities used by Fly Wing.

Zerocap / LTP: Integrating SGB Net into OTC, institutional brokerage, and fund allocation processes.

MetaComp: USD receipts and settlements within the network.

First Digital: Supporting multi-account cash management and related settlements for FDUSD operations.

Payward: Integrating SGB Net to initially serve some institutional clients with USD settlements; there is also a liquidity cooperation arrangement with Kraken Prime.

These relationships include bank clients, product integrations, and cooperation arrangements, with varying depths of use. Specific uses can better illustrate the business position than the length of the list.

In March 2026, Zerocap released a statement confirming that it had integrated SGB Net into the global OTC infrastructure, achieving same-day USD settlement during Asian hours. The institutional clients listed include family offices, payment companies, and digital asset funds.

For this type of business, when fiat currency can be delivered after a transaction directly affects subsequent fund usage. If the trading team is out of sync with the USD processing window, it needs to wait, track the arrival, and arrange available balances during that period.

What SGB improves in this process is the timing and predictability of fund delivery. The treasury team can arrange how much money can be used that day and when the next payment can be executed.

The case of OSL provides clues about the internal network: when both parties are on the SGB network, the improvement in fiat settlement is most evident; the case also connects more internal deliveries with more OSL clients using SGB.

Thus, clients have reason to push their commonly used counterparties to join. A client list needs to translate into network value, relying on the real payments that occur between the lists.

Early clients still need service performance to build trust. The case of Matrixport reveals that some cross-regional transfers were shortened from about two days to a few hours, also mentioning the team's understanding of Web3 operations.

Channels and ecological relationships provide other entry points. Aquanow brings SGB banking services to its institutional client base; Fireblocks Network offers service discovery and connection, while account opening reviews are still handled by the bank.

Matrixport founder Wu Jihan is also a member of SGB's Global Advisory Council; Matrixport and Fly Wing appear in both the bank's client and product cases.

These publicly disclosed cross-relationships help us understand the conditions under which SGB approached some early clients. Moving forward, to deepen the relationships, institutions still need to continue using it in their next funding arrangements.

5. The Internal Network Grows, and It Must Also Capture External USD

SGB Net's early announcements emphasized that transfers between participants do not rely on SWIFT. Outside the network, clients still need to receive money from other banks and make payments to other banks.

Entering 2026, SGB continued to fill this side of the connection.

In January, it opened a JPMorgan correspondent account and adopted Wire 365. The announcement clearly stated that the service supports receiving USD payments and crediting client accounts on weekends and public holidays. In April, it joined the BNY correspondent network; in May, it established banking cooperation with Standard Chartered, involving multi-currency and cross-border fund flows in markets such as the Middle East and Asia.

In October, it adopted BNY's 24/7 USD Book Transfers, covering eligible accounts held directly at BNY, as well as accounts at correspondent banks participating in related services.

Several collaborations jointly expand the scope of services, with different applicable accounts, directions, and processing conditions.

Customer balances are recorded at SGB, and external USD payments require correspondent bank accounts and corresponding processing arrangements. Internal bookkeeping, correspondent bank positions, and receiving bank entries are different links in the funding chain.

Therefore, to assess a "24/7" service, one needs to look along the actual payment path: who can initiate it, which account the money enters, and when it becomes available as a balance for the recipient.

This division of labor also explains SGB's commercial space.

Large banks provide correspondent and clearing services for SGB; SGB serves its institutional clients, organizing access, accounts, payments, and daily support. It leverages existing large bank networks to extend services to the crypto and payment institutions it covers.

Upstream banks still need to understand SGB's clients and funding activities. The Wolfsberg correspondent banking principles include management, client structure, products, and financial crime controls as content for understanding cooperation partners.

Recently, warnings from FinCEN regarding the A7 network have highlighted the risks of third-country companies potentially concealing underlying sanctioned connections.

For banks serving institutional clients, a company name on the list may correspond to more clients and businesses behind it. The flow contributed by a single client needs to be calculated alongside the costs of identifying underlying activities and maintaining upstream bank relationships.

SGB's network is built on these ongoing banking relationships.

6. The money in the account should be able to enter the next phase of business

As external USD connections expand, internal services within accounts are also deepening.

In November 2025, SGB announced the selection of Fireblocks to support digital asset wallet infrastructure and related treasury operations.

Fiat currency balances are recorded by bank accounts, while on-chain asset operations still require wallets, permissions, and transaction approvals. This infrastructure provides the conditions for subsequent services.

In February 2026, SGB launched Virtual Accounts, supporting structured account identifiers based on payers, invoices, or business units, and combined with COBO and POBO, improving payment identification and reconciliation.

When funds arrive, institutions also need to know who the money belongs to, which business it corresponds to, and how to handle the next steps. Virtual account identifiers help identify and organize funds; client funding accounts take on the corresponding account and fund management. Whether underlying clients have independent banking relationships depends on specific arrangements.

Fly Wing is a disclosed user. This wholly-owned subsidiary of Matrixport uses related services to support mining clients' withdrawals, obtaining liquidity needed for operating costs such as electricity payments.

This example clearly connects the demand: income comes from digital assets, while operating expenses require fiat currency, and the platform also needs to identify each client and their funds. Identification, conversion, and payment need to be linked within the same operational process.

Stablecoin services are also advancing. In February 2026, SGB announced upgrades to its fiat and stablecoin platform; in April, it officially launched stablecoin minting and redemption services, initially supporting transactions over $100,000 in USDC, targeting enterprises and high-net-worth clients, and integrating with SGB Net.

In the same month, First Digital announced a partnership involving the banking settlement, multi-account, and cash management needed for FDUSD operations, including interest payments and time deposit arrangements.

Bank clients need to convert USD into stablecoins, and the stablecoin business itself also requires bank accounts and cash management. SGB enters this funding chain from both ends.

By October, the collaboration with Payward further connected trading venues, and Kraken Prime was planned as an additional source of liquidity.

Once funds can be allocated, there also needs to be a counterparty providing quotes and assets. Settlement and liquidity must be closely connected to support institutions in completing fund utilization.

These products are advancing in a cross-functional manner, gradually increasing the work that can be accomplished within the same banking relationship.

7. After the flow increases, the business must be retained

SGB's publicly reported usage scale has several observation points:

For the entire year of 2025: bank transaction volume of $12 billion, with SGB Net accounting for $6 billion. Source and criteria: The Business Times, March 2026 interview report.

When disclosed in February 2026: SGB Net's monthly fiat transaction volume exceeded $2 billion. Source and criteria: SGB announcement.

When disclosed in October 2026: SGB Net's monthly fiat transaction volume exceeded $20 billion. Source and criteria: SGB and Payward cooperation announcement.

Annual and monthly data cover different periods, and counting methods have not been fully disclosed. This set of figures can observe usage scale; operational value also needs to be judged in conjunction with daily balances, client concentration, and income composition.

There is a layer of business relationships worth further unpacking.

Clients want funds to transfer faster, and banks also hope clients will continue to use their services. Increased efficiency may reduce the balance required to be reserved for each transaction; increased transaction volume does not necessarily synchronize with the deposit scale that banks can sustainably operate.

Therefore, the returns from a free network should focus on what business clients have retained: how many accounts are used daily, how balances circulate, and whether services such as foreign exchange, conversion, and cash management can form a sustainable income. The contributions of these links still require more complete operational data for verification.

From the exploration of the Construction Bank in Singapore that did not continue to advance, to the gradually forming funding network in Bahrain, SGB has moved from providing accounts to organizing funding activities between institutions. It connects to a mature USD system externally while integrating payments, transactions, and on-chain services into clients' daily operations internally.

With "Singapore" and "Gulf" in its name, its daily business involves exchanges, payment companies, and global banks. SGB is establishing ongoing banking relationships among these institutions.

This article is based on historical interviews with management, shareholder and bank announcements, materials released by clients and partners, and regulatory documents. Historical decision-making motives are attributed according to interviewee accounts, while business mechanisms and routes are summarized based on publicly available facts. The client list is incomplete, and bank clients, product access, and cooperation arrangements are understood separately; case results belong to the parties disclosed and do not equate to independent audits. Annual and monthly transaction volumes are listed according to the criteria of each source.

Data notes: The client proportion in this article uses the management interview criteria from November 2025, and transaction scale uses the disclosure criteria from various sources; network effects are based on client usage analysis and have not been determined to establish a solid competitive advantage. A7 is an industry risk background, and public materials have not confirmed that SGB adjusted its account policies or exited clients due to it.

1. The Business Times, 2026-03-05, Singapore investors build showcase of banking expertise in Gulf. Early Singapore exploration and Construction Bank opportunities are based on Shawn Chan's review and explanation in the interview; the $12 billion bank transaction volume and $6 billion SGB Net transaction volume are based on this report. The related transaction volume is not independently verified audit data in this article, and various scale indicators are understood according to the original report criteria.

2. Bahrain EDB / SGB, 2023-05, Whampoa Group digital bank initiative; Mumtalakat, 2024-02-28, Investment alongside Whampoa Group; SGB, 2024-11-04, Corporate banking launch. This article only considers the bank's exit and SGB's establishment as concurrent market backgrounds, without determining that the establishment decision was directly triggered by the aforementioned events.

3. SGB, 2026-10-05, Payward and Singapore Gulf Bank partner. Some institutional clients, applicable jurisdictions, and the initial USD settlement scope are subject to the announcement; subsequent liquidity arrangements with Kraken Prime and settled connections are understood separately.

4. Whampoa Group / Reuters, 2022-09-09, Digital assets venture investment plan; date as per shareholder news directory. The $100 million was the amount intended to be deployed through a venture capital fund at that time, not as SGB's bank capital or completed investment amount.

5. Silvergate / SEC, 2023-03-08, Intent to wind down operations and voluntarily liquidate Silvergate Bank; FDIC, Signature Bank failure information. The former is an orderly exit and voluntary liquidation plan, while the latter is regulatory closure and takeover; it does not determine that Signet ceased operations on the day of the takeover.

6. CryptoNews, 2025-11-27, Interview with Shawn Chan: Asia--GCC payments and digital banking. Unified regulation and nearly half of clients coming from traditional payment industries are based on that CEO interview; the latter does not represent the current client composition for 2026, nor does it represent independently verified operational data.

7. Central Bank of Bahrain, Official responsibilities and integrated-regulator description, 2026-10-25. Unified regulatory agencies do not mean that all businesses share the same licensing conditions.

8. SGB / Bloomberg, 2023-08-28, JPMorgan regional head hired by Singapore Gulf Bank.

9. Terrapinn, Ali Moosa historical speaker biography. This page lists his responsibilities during his tenure at JPMorgan, not his current position.

10. Cash and Trade Magazine, 2011-08-01, How J.P. Morgan helps clients meet challenges. This includes Ali Moosa's responsibilities related to Middle East and North Africa institutions and Treasury Services at that time, and discusses bank cooperation, corporate cash management, and trade finance.

11. SGB, 2024-01-22, Edmund Lee appointed chairman.

12. Keith L. public professional profile; SGB, 2024, CFO and COO appointments; SGB leadership. The co-founders and other management and advisory roles noted on the official website are understood separately.

13. Shen Zhou Information, 2024-03-28, 2023 performance release; 2024-04-29, 2024 first quarter report; Fireblocks / SGB, 2025-11-04, Digital asset wallet infrastructure. Supplier disclosures are not used to infer unpublished internal technical architecture.

14. SGB, 2025-05-01, SGB Net launch; 2026-02-02, Fiat and stablecoin platform; 2026-04-17, Stablecoin mint and redeem service. The initial currency, amount, and customer conditions for the service are subject to the corresponding announcement.

15. SGB, 2025-09-09, Binance Bahrain direct USD transfers. Applicable to the relevant services of Binance Bahrain, not referring to the entities and customers of the currency security department.

16. SGB, 2025-12-17, OSL customer story.

17. SGB, 2025-12-03, Matrixport customer story; 2026-02-07, Real-time virtual accounts. The case service timeliness does not serve as a unified SLA for all customers and all transactions.

18. Zerocap, 2026-03, Institutional fiat settlement partnership; SGB, 2026-03-24, LTP collaboration.

19. SGB, 2026-03-10, MetaComp customer story. 80% is the highest cost reduction mentioned in the case, not representative of all businesses.

20. First Digital, 2026-04-14, Banking infrastructure for FDUSD operations. The announcement does not establish SGB as the exclusive reserve custodian bank for FDUSD.

21. SGB, 2025-08-12, Aquanow partnership; Fireblocks, 2025-09-11, Banks on the Network for Payments. Network service discovery and bank account opening review are independent of each other, and specific customer sources are not inferred from this.

22. SGB, About us and Global Advisory Board.

23. SGB, 2026-01-12, JPMorgan account and Wire 365; 2026-04-07, BNY corrected release; 2026-05-12, Standard Chartered relationship; 2026-10-12, BNY 24/7 USD Book Transfers. The applicable accounts, directions, and participant conditions for each service should be understood separately. The BNY April materials use the corrected version and do not use the deleted fixed income platform description.

24. Wolfsberg Group, Correspondent Banking Principles.

25. FinCEN, 2026-10-01, A7 Network alert; Federal Register, 2026-10-05, Proposed special measure regarding A7 Network Sub-Agents. The network operation method adopts the description of the regulatory agency; the new measures remain a proposal as of the date of this document, with the comment deadline set for 2026-11-04. This document does not assert that SGB has experienced specific account closure events or has a connection with A7.