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In a momentous milestone, Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), has granted the cryptocurrency exchange Blockchain.com a payments license. The exchange received its formal major payment institution (MPI) license on August 1. According to MAS laws, this license authorizes Blockchain.com to provide digital payment token services to institutional and accredited investors.
The first step in Blockchain.com’s pursuit of the MPI license was receiving in-principle permission from MAS in September of the prior year. With the full license in hand, Blockchain.com is now one of Singapore’s twelve suppliers of services for digital payment tokens. Circle, Independent Reserve, Paxos, Revolut, and DBS Vickers are notable rivals in this market.
Singapore is working hard to establish itself as a major cryptocurrency centre. With financial pledges and legal changes meant to strengthen customer safeguards, it has been supporting this goal. As a show of the country’s commitment to promoting innovation, MAS recently announced its funding of around 150 million Singapore dollars ($112 million) to help the fintech industry, particularly Web3 firms.
In a move that illustrates MAS’s regulatory approach, it approved Ripple, a blockchain-based payments company, in principle for a large payment institution license in June. Additionally, seven months after receiving its in-principle approval, Circle, the company that issuing USD Coin (USDC), obtained its MPI license in the same month.
The regulatory environment for the cryptocurrency business in Singapore is continuously changing. Notably, the MAS issued new regulations in July requiring cryptocurrency service providers to store client assets in a statutory trust by the end of the calendar year. Additionally, ideas to prevent cryptocurrency service providers from supporting the loan or staking of retail client holdings are now being discussed.
According to a research released in July by Galaxy Digital, Singapore-based crypto companies were placed third internationally, only behind British businesses, in Q2 2022, despite the fact that the United States continued to dominate fundraising for crypto startups.