Ripple made immense news this year, particularly due to its tiff with the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC]. This did not hold back the platform from doing business. Ripple was seen expanding and Japan seemed to be its latest venture.
The SEC blatantly accused Ripple of selling unregistered securities. While none of the parties involved in the case decided to settle, the case persisted. The platform seemed to have figured out that the US could be a tough nut to crack, therefore it started laying focus on its On Demand Liquidity [ODL] services.
An array of platforms have begun to realize that the Asian market is a promising one. Hence several firms have been exploring Asian waters and Ripple has joined the list. The platform’s recent announcement revealed that it had rolled out a brand new ODL payment corridor between Japan and the Philippines.
Ripple to swim in Japanese waters
Japan’s SBI Remit, the remittance division of the SBI group would reportedly carry this out with the Philippines’s prominent cryptocurrency exchange, Coins.ph. Both the parties would reportedly employ XRP as the bridge currency. Users would then be able to convert the received XRP into the Filipino peso.
The announcement further read,
“With this scheme, SBI Remit will expand the lineup of remittances to the Philippines by adding recipients via Coins.ph as an expansion of the recipients of conventional remittances to the Philippines. In addition, in this scheme, cryptocurrency XRP is used as the bridge currency, and by utilizing the abundant liquidity of XRP possessed by SBI VC Trade, remittance costs such as pre-funding are reduced at SBI Remit, and international remittance business We believe that this will lead to the strengthening of competitiveness in Japan.”
In addition to this, SBI hopes to further expand its association with Ripple while focusing on remittance destination countries particularly Southeast Asia.
Ripple’s ODL services made advancements this year and emerged as a prominent service following the digitalization wave.