Ripple Receives In-Principle Approval for Singapore Payments License

Ripple announced on June 22, 2023 that the Monetary Authority of Singapore had granted its local subsidiary in-principle approval for a Major Payment Institution license, advancing the blockchain-payments company toward regulated digital-payment-token operations in the city-state.

The approval applied to Ripple Markets APAC Pte. Ltd., not to the XRP token or the Ripple group everywhere it operated. It also represented an intermediate licensing milestone rather than a final license. Even with those boundaries, the decision mattered because Singapore was Ripple’s Asia-Pacific headquarters and an important operating center for its cross-border payment product.

What the approval covered

Ripple said the approval would enable its Singapore subsidiary to offer regulated digital-payment-token products and services and expand customer use of its On-Demand Liquidity service. That product was designed to use XRP as a bridge asset in cross-border transfers, reducing the need for payment providers to hold pre-funded balances in destination currencies.

The Straits Times reported on June 22 that Ripple Markets APAC had applied under Singapore’s Payment Services Act and had operated under a licensing exemption since 2020. The newspaper also reported that Ripple’s Singapore workforce had nearly reached 50 after doubling during the preceding year.

Those operating figures were supplied by Ripple rather than an audited regulatory filing. The company further said approximately 60% of payments over RippleNet used On-Demand Liquidity during 2022 and that Singapore-routed ODL volume had increased by more than five times from 2021. The surviving sources do not provide transaction-level data, a currency basis or a reproducible measurement methodology for those claims.

Why Singapore’s framework mattered

Singapore’s licensing system offered cryptocurrency payment companies an identifiable regulatory route at a time when the legal treatment of digital-asset businesses remained unsettled across major markets. A Major Payment Institution license sits within the Payment Services Act framework and can cover services including digital payment tokens and cross-border money transfers.

That status does not amount to government approval of an asset’s value, investment merits or technical design. It regulates the licensed entity and specified activities. The in-principle decision therefore indicated that Ripple’s application had advanced, but it did not establish that every condition had been satisfied or that every Ripple product could immediately be offered in Singapore.

The distinction was particularly important because Ripple was simultaneously defending a United States Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit concerning offers and sales of XRP. No ruling in that litigation had been issued by June 22, 2023. Singapore’s licensing process neither resolved the U.S. case nor determined XRP’s legal status in other jurisdictions.

Institutional significance without a market claim

The decision provided evidence that Ripple was building a regulated operating base in Asia-Pacific rather than relying solely on markets where its legal position was contested. It also illustrated Singapore’s entity-and-activity-based approach: a company could seek permission for defined payment services without the regulator making a universal judgment about the associated token.

No XRP or bitcoin price reaction is asserted in this reconstruction. Cryptocurrency trading is continuous and fragmented across exchanges, and the available records do not isolate the Singapore approval from other developments affecting digital-asset prices on June 22.

Later confirmation

Ripple announced on October 4, 2023 that MAS had issued the full Major Payment Institution license to Ripple Markets APAC. MAS’s later financial-institutions directory lists the subsidiary as a Major Payment Institution authorized for account issuance, domestic and cross-border money transfers, e-money issuance and digital-payment-token services.

That later record confirms that the June application progressed to a completed license. It does not change the event-day description: on June 22, the verified development was in-principle approval, with the final licensing step still outstanding.