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: entities in Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK and Thailand; offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok and Paris
The Statrys group operates through legal entities in Hong Kong (Statrys Limited, the HK MSO licensee), Singapore (Statrys Singapore Pte. Ltd, the MAS-licensed Major Payment Institution), the United Kingdom (Statrys UK Limited, Companies House company number 12031334, status Active) and Thailand. Separately from its entities, Statrys lists offices in four cities: Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok and Paris. Paris was missing from our previous version and is now added. The UK registration is a legal entity, not a stated office location, and the two should not be conflated. Statrys also accepts BVI-incorporated companies per its onboarding documentation, processed against the Hong Kong 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.






