Ripple’s next stop: Service expansion in UK, Ireland

Ripple is working its way around the globe after being approved to operate in Singapore last month

article-image

Jievani/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Ripple looks to expand its services to the UK and Ireland following its partial victory in a high profile case brought by the SEC.

Ripple has applied for a crypto asset firm license with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and now it’s going after a payment institution license in Ireland, Sendi Young said to DL News in an article published Monday.

Young, Ripple’s European managing director, confirmed the information she provided to DL News in an early morning tweet on Tuesday. Blockworks reached out to Ripple for additional information about its activities in the UK and Ireland, but the company declined to comment. 

The UK’s FCA approved Bitstamp’s registration as a crypto asset firm in June 2023. MoonPay, Wintermute Trading and eToro are among other notable firms that have registered

In Ireland, payment institutions need to be approved by the country’s central bank, whose leader wasn’t too fond of “unbacked crypto” as recently as May.

Bank of Ireland Governor Gabriel Makhlouf said in a May blog post that “the claimed benefits of ‘unbacked crypto’ should be treated with a large dose of skepticism. The purchase of such products can be similar to purchasing a lottery ticket: you might win but you probably won’t.”

This could perhaps present a hurdle to Ripple, which is linked to the cryptocurrency XRP. Though it should be noted that Ripple says its payment solutions and XRP are separate from one another. 

In fact, many banking institutions use RippleNet, an enterprise blockchain network, including Santander and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

And Ripple isn’t just expanding in Europe. Singapore allowed Ripple in June to begin offering crypto and payment services in the southeast Asian city state.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates (8).png

Research

Meta-aggregators like Titan and Kamino Swap improve price execution for users, making the Solana swapping landscape more competitive. Jupiter has incorporated meta-aggregation features into its latest routing engine to keep users on its front end (own the user, own the flow). At large, teams are treating swaps as a commoditized complement, offering incredibly cheap or free swaps to own the end-user and increase demand for high-margin product offerings (multi-product DeFi). On another note, the divergence in the concentration of aggregator volume between DEXs suggests increased specialization at the DEX layer by asset type.

article-image

Solana dropped nearly 10% amid mass crypto liquidations triggered by rising geopolitical strife

article-image

Investors moved to safe assets like the US dollar and gold, but bonds faltered

article-image

The Amex offers up to 4% bitcoin back, but the deal is a bit ironic considering crypto’s goals

article-image

Short answer: Subnets are now cheaper to bootstrap than a Celestia rollup

article-image

Few things are more cypherpunk than keeping keys in your brain wallet

article-image

Many community banks and credit unions feel like they missed the fintech craze — and they don’t want to miss stablecoins