Aquanow Named Best Embedded Digital Assets Brokerage

The Digital Banker has recognised Aquanow’s work enabling financial institutions to bring digital asset trading into the customer experiences they already operate and trust.

‍Aquanow has been named Best Embedded Digital Assets Brokerage at The Digital Banker’s Digital Assets Awards 2026.

The award recognises Aquanow Embedded Brokerage, our managed solution for banks, neobanks and brokerages seeking to offer digital asset trading through their existing channels.

A simple trading experience requires significant infrastructure behind it. Aquanow brings together customer and account infrastructure, institutional liquidity, principal execution, regulated custody, compliance screening, reporting and 24/7 operational support. This allows institutions to retain their brand and primary customer relationship without building every specialist capability internally.

The recognition follows the deployment of Aquanow Embedded Brokerage within Emirates NBD’s Liv X app. Launched in 2025, the service enables eligible Liv X customers to buy, hold and sell supported digital assets without leaving the bank’s mobile experience.

Liv retained the customer interface and linked-account funding journey, while Aquanow ran the fully managed brokerage infrastructure behind it. The service moved from contract signing to live deployment in under six months.

The model combined Aquanow’s round-the-clock brokerage operations with Liv’s customer-facing role and was designed to meet the applicable requirements of both Emirates NBD’s CBUAE-regulated environment and Aquanow’s VARA-regulated environment.

“Digital asset trading may look simple on screen, but delivering it within a regulated financial institution requires liquidity, custody, compliance, customer-account infrastructure and round-the-clock operations to work as one,” said Phil Sham, CEO and Co-Founder of Aquanow. “This award recognises the strength of that operating model, the teams behind it and the trust our partners place in us. We are proud to help institutions bring digital assets into the financial experiences their customers already use.”

The Digital Assets Awards 2026 assessed more than 100 initiatives from 75 institutions across 20 markets. Entries were evaluated on innovation and differentiation, client and market impact, depth of implementation, and the ability to operate securely and at scale.

This recognition reinforces Aquanow’s role as the infrastructure partner for institutions looking to launch and scale digital asset services.

‍Learn more about Aquanow Embedded Brokerage