SINGAPORE – Whampoa Group, a prominent private family office in Singapore, plans to set up a digital bank in Bahrain whose services will include round-the-clock payments and settlement for digital asset companies.

The goal is to establish the bank by the year end and provide banking services as well as the trading, custody and asset management of digital tokens, according to a statement from Whampoa Group.

The investment group was co-founded by Ms Amy Lee, a former senior partner at Lee & Lee, a Singapore law firm started by her father Lee Kim Yew and Singapore’s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and his wife.

Its other co-founder is Mr Lee Han Shih, a member of the business family that co-founded OCBC Bank and Lee Rubber Group, among other companies.

A government spokesman for Bahrain said the nation’s central bank has “granted an in-principle approval” to Whampoa Group for the venture, adding that the “approval is tentative, and a full licence will be granted only after all regulatory requirements have been met”.

Many existing lenders are wary of working with digital asset firms following 2022’s market rout and blow-ups like the FTX exchange. The sector also lost round-the-clock payment rails when crypto-friendly lenders Signature Bank and Silvergate Capital collapsed in this year’s banking turmoil in the United States.

Whampoa Group in 2022 said it intended to raise US$50 million (S$67 million) for a crypto-related hedge fund and deploy US$100 million for a venture capital fund for the digital asset sector.

Before that, the group was part of a consortium led by ByteDance that applied for but did not receive a digital bank licence in Singapore.

Jurisdictions globally are seeking to clarify and strengthen the regulation of digital assets. Some like Bahrain, Dubai and Hong Kong are trying to attract crypto-related investment.

In contrast, the US has cracked down on the sector. BLOOMBERG