The company will use the licence issued by the New York Department of Financial Services to expand its client base in the state. Until today, the only cryptocurrency business holding BitLisense was Circle.

Ripple has reported its success in a press release. The permit will allow the company to trade its own digital currency XRP.

“Ripple engaged with New York’s Department of Financial Services and today received a “BitLicense” to sell and custody XRP, the digital asset native to the Ripple Consensus Ledger, for institutional investors and financial institutions in New York,” writes the company.

Ripple is a real-time gross settlement protocol, which aims to implement its services with the leading banks. According to its co-founder and CEO Chris Larsen, obtaining the BitLicense is a very important act of validation of the institutional use of digital assets by DFS, one of the most influential state regulators.

“I’m proud of the work of our regulatory relations team, led by Ryan Zagone. With the BitLicense in hand, we look forward to working with our New York bank customers seeking to use XRP for liquidity and cost savings,” says Larsen.

Initially, Ripple distanced itself from the bitcoin community, but recently it became more favourable towards the cryptocurrency, which is also indicated by obtaining the BitLicense.

A year ago, The Royal Bank of Scotland with the help of Ripple implemented a Proof-of-Concept for automated bank transfers. The bank was considering to invest £3.5 million in a two-year’s transformation programme focusing primarily on IT system resilience.

In October 2015, Ripple raised $4 million from the London-based tech investment fund Santander InnoVentures. The fund was established by Santander Group in 2014 “to support the digital revolution.” A report published by Santander InnoVentures in June claimed that banks could save up to $2 billion a year using the blockchain technology. The bank itself is currently developing a Proof-of-Concept based on Ripple's international payments technology.

On 6 May, Reuters reported that the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDF) was going to approve licence applications from two cryptocurrency companies. The news agency pointed to Coinbase and Ripple.