Crypto firm Ripple gets in-principle payments license in Singapore
Brad Garlinghouse, chief executive officer of Ripple, speaks during the CoinDesk 2022 Consensus Festival in Austin, Texas, US, on Saturday, June 11, 2022.

Blockchain company Ripple said Thursday it 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 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 services 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 Securities and Exchange Commission charged Ripple, co-founder Christian Larsen and CEO Brad Garlinghouse with conducting an illegal securities offering that raised more than $1.3 billion through sales of XRP.

Ripple denies the SEC allegations, contending that XRP is a currency rather than a security that would be subject to strict rules.

Singapore is one of the largest currency corridors from which Ripple sends money across borders using XRP, the company said in a press release.