Blockchain company Ripple has received in-principle regulatory approval to operate in Singapore, in a rare moment of good news for the cryptocurrency industry globally as it faces tightening policy back home in the United States.
Ripple said on Thursday that it was granted in-principle approval of a Major Payment Institution Licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the country’s central bank.
The license will allow Ripple to offer regulated digital payment token products and services and expand the cross-border transfers of XRP, a cryptocurrency the company is closely associated with, among its customers, which are banks and financial institutions.
XRP was trading at around 50 cents late Wednesday evening.
Ripple, a San Francisco-based fintech company, is mostly known for XRP as well as an interbank messaging service based on blockchain, the distributed ledger technology that underpins many cryptocurrencies.
The company’s on-demand liquidity service uses XRP as a kind of “bridge” between currencies, which it says allows payment providers and banks to process cross-border transactions much faster than they would over legacy payment rails.
But Ripple also operates a blockchain-based international messaging system called RippleNet to facilitate massive transfers of funds between banks and other financial institutions, similar to the global interbank messaging system SWIFT.
The approval from Singapore comes as Ripple faces a lawsuit from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which alleges that the company and its executives raised more than $1.3 billion through an unregistered securities offering of XRP. Ripple has denied the allegations and argued that XRP is not a security but a medium of exchange.
Singapore is one of the most crypto-friendly jurisdictions in the world, with a clear and supportive regulatory framework for digital assets. The country has also attracted several major crypto players, such as Binance, Coinbase and Gemini, to set up operations there.
Ripple said it chose Singapore as its regional headquarters in Asia-Pacific last year, citing its “pro-business environment” and “forward-thinking” regulatory approach. The company said it has more than 200 customers across 55 countries using its blockchain solutions.
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