Leading Australian cryptocurrency exchange Independent Reserve has announced that it will soon be expanding into Singapore. As part of the expansion, Independent Reserve will be adding Singaporean dollar trading pairs to the exchange.
Commenting on the motivation for the expansion plans, Adrian Przelozny, CEO and co-founder said that:
a number of positive moves by Singaporean regulators, including the introduction of the Payments Services Act by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
The Payment Services Act (the Act) was passed by Parliament on 14 January 2019, and recently came into effect on 28 January 2020. The Explanatory Brief published by MAS for the Act provides that the Act is intended to streamline payment services regulation by combining the Payment Systems (Oversight) Act (Cap. 222A) (“PS(O)A”) and the Money-Changing and Remittance Businesses Act (Cap. 187) into a single piece of legislation. Further, the Act is expanding the scope of regulated payment services to ensure that new developments in the industry can be appropriately regulated, including crypto-centric payment services.
Independent Reserve was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2013, and in 2018 was one of two exchanges that were the first to obtain registration with AUSTRAC as a digital currency exchange. Since then, Independent Reserve has been the first Australian exchange to obtain insurance coverage over its crypto assets, has launched a separate accelerator/co-working space supporting companies building blockchain and fintech products and services, and was the winner of Blockchain Australia's Cryptocurrency Exchange of the Year award in 2019.