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Stellar, a blockchain-based platform connecting banks, payments systems and people to move money quickly around the globe, is now officially approved by Islamic financial institutions.

The Stellar Foundation received a Sharia compliance certification, making it the first distributed ledger technology to gain approval by the Shariyah Review Bureau (SRB), a leading international Sharia advisory agency licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain. The Sharia compliance certification extends to applications and usages of Stellar’s native cryptocurrency, Lumens (XLM).

The certification means the Stellar ecosystem can expand into regions that require compliance with Islamic financing principles. It can now incorporate financial institutions in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Indonesia, Malaysia and other regions.

Many of these regions are home to foreign workers who use remittance services.

Stellar is now the seventh largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $5.7 billion, surpassing Litecoin with a market cap of $5.0 billion.

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Stellar also just announced a collaboration with tech giant IBM and financial services institution Stronghold, which has the only trading platform and crypto exchange built on the Stellar network that settles in USD.

The three companies are working to position Stronghold’s new stablecoin, the Stronghold USD token, as a liquidity tool for real-time foreign exchange and international settlements.