What Statrys actually is (and is not)
Statrys is a licensed Money Service Operator (MSO) in Hong Kong, regulated by the Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department. It is not a bank. The Statrys terms and conditions are explicit on this point: clause 1.2 states "We are not a bank" and clause 1.4 states "Your Statrys Account or Virtual Business Account is not a bank account."
That distinction matters. As an MSO, Statrys is regulated for payment services and FX, but funds held in a Statrys Business Account are not covered by the Hong Kong Deposit Protection Scheme. Safeguarding is provided through a different mechanism: customer funds are held in segregated accounts at partner banks rather than commingled with operating funds. This is the standard EMI and MSO safeguarding pattern.
Group structure: HK, SG, UK, Thailand
Statrys operates through several legal entities. The Hong Kong entity (Statrys Limited) is the MSO licensee for HK. Statrys Singapore Pte. Ltd is licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore as a Major Payment Institution under the Payment Services Act. There is a UK entity registered with Companies House and a Thai entity, both of which extend the brand into adjacent markets. For most readers the practical entity is either the HK or SG one, depending on where the company being opened is incorporated. Statrys also accepts BVI-incorporated companies per its onboarding documentation, processed against the HK entity.
Who custodies the money
Statrys is the licensed provider of the Business Account; it does not hold customer money on its own balance sheet the way a tier-one bank does with insured deposits. Instead, customer funds are safeguarded in segregated accounts held with its custodian bank, DBS, kept separate from Statrys own operating funds. Each account comes with a multi-currency account number plus additional virtual receiving accounts, all issued under the Statrys product.
In practice, a Statrys customer receives a HKD account number plus additional virtual receiving accounts in other currencies, all managed inside the Statrys portal: deposits arrive into the Statrys account and balances appear in one dashboard. From a counterparty-risk perspective, what matters is that the money is safeguarded in segregated accounts at the custodian bank rather than held as an insured deposit at Statrys. Protection comes from fund segregation at the partner bank, not from a deposit guarantee scheme.
Why people confuse Statrys with a bank
The marketing language across the SaaS sector blurs the bank vs neobank vs MSO distinction. Statrys describes itself as a multi-currency business account, which is functionally true for the customer. But the regulatory status is MSO in HK and MPI in SG, not banking. If your treasury policy requires bank-grade deposit insurance or a banking licence in the holding entity, Statrys does not meet that bar. If your operational requirement is a working multi-currency account with payment rails and FX, Statrys does meet that bar, in the same way Wise Business, Payoneer and Aspire do.
Statrys is one option among several. See how it stacks up against Mercury, Brex, Relay and Revolut in our digital business bank comparison.






