Cross border transactions have become the norm with several mainstream companies taking the route. Ripple has been one of the several companies taking an initiative from the cryptocurrency sphere and that has shown with the partnerships.
Just recently, one of Ripple’s major partners, MoneyGram, announced a new service that is not using Ripple’s technology, but rather that of its rival, Visa
MoneyGram claimed that FastSend was developed keeping in mind the quick and easy access that people need to money. The service will enable users to send money to a phone number in real time using their particular website or mobile app. Since investing $50 million in the remittance company, Ripple owns 10 percent of MoneyGram.
During the launch, Kamila Chytil, the Chief Operating Officer [COO] of MoneyGram stated:
“Today, MoneyGram is utilizing Ripple’s On Demand Liquidity product which allows MoneyGram to trade FX at a corporate level using XRP. It’s a back-end treasury function that’s not consumer facing. The technology is helping to solve the most expensive and time consuming aspect of the current process by reducing the amount of money the company needs to park around the world, which will eventually reduce working capital needs.”
The service is intended to be cheap to ensure everyone uses it. The cost of individual transactions will be $1.99 with the cap limit set at $10,000. FastSend will be supported by Visa Direct rails with the market expecting that it will draw customers into the market. This can probably result in more people learning about Ripple and the cryptocurrency cross border transaction department.
Alex Holmes, the CEO of MoneyGram stated that users will be able to send money as easily as sending a text. Chytil added that the company will use direct original credit transaction to send funds. This mode of transfer will not use Distributed Ledger Technology [DLT] but will instead use open-source cloud services.
At the same time, Ripple uses blockchain-based products extensively to service other products as well. Officials close to the company stated that FastSend functions as a back end treasury function that is not consumer-facing. This also reduces the amount of capital that the bank needs to park around the world. Ripple saw this as the major factor in controlling the amount of liquidity in the market.
Liquidity is seen as the main problem that a lot of banks seems to face With XRP and the company’s proprietary technology, Ripple plans to rid the issue of circulating currency. Once the liquidity for trading increases, the remaining capital can be used for other purposes such as margin trading. According to MoneyGram, the latest feature will utilize the blockchain to change the financial world.
Alex Holmes led the company aims to increase blockchain adoption among financial institutions and believes that it will come to fruition soon. Ripple’s influence had also penetrated into the Asian market recently. The popular Bangladeshi organization Bank of Asia had just announced that they had joined the RippleNet.
The news about Bank of Asia was first discovered by a Twitter user who had noticed the bank’s logo on a Ripple document. The bank now joins the likes of Santander, American Express, Send Friend and Standard Chartered.
