S'pore's Digital Asset Exchange offers commercial papers to retail investors

A private markets investment and trading platform is offering retail investors the chance to buy an investment usually reserved for more sophisticated traders.

- Sue-Ann Tan

Singapore's Digital Asset Exchange (SDAX), as the platform is known, is launching a short-term financing tool designed to help a firm cover working capital and other immediate needs.

Such tools – called commercial paper in financial circles – are usually offered only to institutional and accredited investors.

But SDAX aims to raise up to $1 million by selling the product to retail investors. The funds will then be used by Intraco, the Singapore Exchange-listed trading company that is issuing the commercial paper.

The product is for three months and will pay an interest rate of 3.85 per cent a year. The offer closes on Nov 28.

Retail investors who create an account on SDAX can buy a slice of the commercial paper in the form of tokens, with each one requiring a minimum investment of $1,000.

Investors have to buy only one token to take part in the product, making this an easily accessible option for retail investors, SDAX said.