SC Ventures (Digital Assets) Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards 2025 - Winner

SC Ventures by Standard Chartered builds and invests in breakthrough ventures in and beyond banking. SC Ventures provides a platform for organizations to collaborate and co-create fintech ecosystems to ultimately rewire the DNA in banking. Unlike many VCs that approach start-ups with an ROI mindset, we build and nurture budding innovations with an operational mindset to drive ROI.

Guided by three high-conviction themes—Digital Banking & Lifestyle, Trade & Supply Chains, and Digital Assets, enabled by AI, Web3/Blockchain, ESG and Quantum—SC Ventures leverages its bank-backed heritage to build, develop and scale future-ready solutions that drive long-term strategic value for the bank and its partners.

The digital assets landscape is evolving faster than regulation can keep pace, leading to growing concerns about security and trust. While nimble crypto-native firms continue to innovate, traditional financial institutions are emerging as preferred partners for institutional-grade digital asset access, not because they move faster but because they move within the necessary guardrails – findings from a 2024 EY-Parthenon digital asset report found that 47% of institutional investors prefer to deal with traditional financial institutions for digital asset services, with 82% of respondents prioritising regulatory compliance when selecting custody providers or technology firms. For SC Ventures-backed ventures like Libeara, Zodia Markets, and Zodia Custody, this is not a signal to slow down, but a mandate to build with infrastructure, trust, and governance at the core, enabling the future of finance to scale within systems that are both secure and credible.

SC Ventures’ founder and CEO, Alex Manson, saw that while digital assets were gaining traction, no firm had the rigorous operating experience and governance framework of an institutional custodian. Leveraging his institutional expertise, he built SC Ventures to create and develop robust, safe, and compliant digital asset solutions, building market confidence and infrastructure for the long term.

Bringing emerging ideas to life with agility, SC Ventures is an essential catalyst for innovation that is both responsible and scalable. SC Ventures is one of the earliest players in the traditional financial services industry to openly invest in the digital assets industry.

Back in September 2016, the Bank completed its investment in Ripple, one of the industry’s oldest blockchain-based digital payments networks. This came on the back of an existing partnership that saw the completion of the world’s first proof of concept for the use of distributed ledger technology to improve security in finance invoicing.

Since then, SC Ventures has incubated other blockchain-focused ventures such as Olea, a blockchain-based digital trade finance platform; Zodia Custody, a digital assets custodian for institutional investors; Zodia Markets, a brokerage and crypto exchange platform also targeted toward institutions; and Libeara, a tokenisation platform that helps provide retail investors access to tokenised government bonds.

Our global digital assets joint ventures, set up in 2023 in partnership with SBI Holdings, has made three strategic investments into Twinstake, Hidden Road, and WalletConnect. These portfolio companies are not only commercial collaboration partners with our ventures and the bank, but have also provided significant insight into the digital asset value chain to further sharpen our strategic approach in digital assets. SC Ventures has also made strategic investments in other digital asset services, including SWIAT, Ripple, and OneTrading.

Collectively, these initiatives, ventures, and strategic investments illustrate SC Ventures’ commitment to not just building in-house solutions but creating scalable solutions and infrastructure that support broader market adoption.

Today, SC Ventures has established physical presence and capabilities in high-growth markets in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. We have incubated 25+ ventures, made minority investments in 20+ portfolio companies, attracted 20+ co-investors in our ventures, and served over 200 institutional and multi-national clients.