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Ripple’s gift to Japan-Thailand remittance payments

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The cryptocurrency company Ripple has announced the beginning of a new cooperative effort with SBI Remit to speed up money transactions between Japan and Thailand. The project would enable Thais living in Japan to instantly transfer money home using RippleNet technology thanks to SBI Remit, the leading payment service in Japan. The Thai side in this endeavor will be represented by Siam Commercial Bank.

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Source: Twitter

According to the press release, in one second, the yen will be accessible for withdrawal in Thai baht in Thailand thanks to the implementation, which will enable more than 47,000 Thais living in Japan to transmit money freely using ATMs. Prior to this, a special agent was needed to complete the transaction, which was primarily made with cash.

Nobuo Ando, representative Director at SBI Remit, said,

“It is our duty to continuously search for superior technological solutions to deliver ever improving remittance services for our customers. With the steady rise of remittance flows, we see Ripple helping us open up new revenue potential for our business and a better overall experience for our customers.”

Asia welcomes Ripple with open arms

While Ripple is being fully utilized by Asian nations and businesses, that are integrating XRP into their operations, in the United States, the company is facing significant regulatory pressure from the Securities and Exchange Commission. However, it appears like Ripple chose to commit $100,000,000 to this and place everything in the hands of attorneys after discovering the rules of this “battle” in order to focus all of its resources and attention on its primary business.

In other news, according to a business representative, Ripple Labs Inc., which is involved in a well-known legal dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, is considering buying some of the assets of the defunct cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network. This announcement was made by the firm earlier this week.

Furthermore, according to Ripple’s most recent study, 76% of financial institutions worldwide would employ blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies by 2025, and the business obviously wants a bigger share of that market. From this perspective, it makes the most sense for Ripple to expand into Asia, which thanks to technology is currently one of the world’s most rapidly rising regions.

Here’s why all eyes are on XRP

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Even as other cryptocurrencies cooled off, XRP continued to slowly inch towards its yearly highs. It rallied by 12% over the past 24 hours, which catapulted its weekly gains to a whopping 60%.

The crypto-asset has performed significantly well this month despite Ripple being embattled by the lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC]. As a matter of fact, the blockchain company forged important deals including its partnership with South Korean GME Remittance to join the former’s payment network RippleNet.

This came just a month after Japan’s money-transfer provider SBI Remit joined hands with mobile payments service Coins.ph and digital asset exchange platform SBI VC Trade to conduct remittance payments from Japan to the Philippines using Ripple’s on-demand liquidity [ODL] service.

The latest string developments have helped XRP to stay afloat $1. To top that, the rally that followed can be described as a sigh of relief to the investors as the altcoin increased from a modest $0.5.

XRP
Here's why all eyes are on XRP 4

XRP’s Development Activity

Well, for one XRP’s price recovery was backed by a solid rise in development activity. This was according to the crypto-analytic platform, Santiment, which noted that the XRP network was closing in on a higher daily GitHub development rate than Bitcoin, an activity that has rarely occurred. Decoupling from Bitcoin has been one of the major drivers for the crypto-assets price action of late.

In addition to that, it was not just the development activity on the digital asset’s network that was approaching new all-time high levels at the time of writing. Its daily active addresses too followed a strong uptrend coupled with high trade volumes and soaring prices.

Santiment’s tweet regarding the same read,

“XRP has pumped to $1.189 today for an impressive 3-month high. Before it decoupled from the crypto pack, we saw hints of development activity skyrocketing. XRP’s team is now submitting the highest github activity rate in the asset’s history.”

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Here's why all eyes are on XRP 5

Ripple dives into Egypt by partnering with the country’s largest bank

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Ripple’s fallout with the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States did not stop the firm from expanding. While the platform has already revealed plans on diving into South East Asian shores, its latest announcement made it clear that it would soon be walking on the deserts of Egypt.

In its most recent announcement, Ripple shed light on a partnership with the National Bank of Egypt [NBE]. With this collaboration, the platform intended to enter Egypt. The world witnessed the emergence of digitalization right after the Covid-19 breakout. Ripple seemed to be aiding this by allowing users to spruce up cross-border payments. NBE with its latest partnership hopes to ease this process.

Ripple to spruce up cross-border payments

The announcement noted that Egypt had several citizens working outside the countries who in turn sent back home money. The country saw a whopping $24 billion inflows in 2020. While pointing out the slow and pricey payment infrastructure that is in place, NBE would reportedly be employing RippleNet as well as LuLu International Exchange.

The Managing Director of South Asia and MENA, Navin Gupta addressed the same and pointed out the importance of sending and receiving money “quickly, reliably and inexpensively.” He added,

“Ripple is proud to partner with NBE and LuLu Exchange to bolster the MENA region’s financial infrastructure and provide a frictionless cross-border payments experience for the Egyptian community.”

With Egypt sitting in the top five countries that receive the most overseas remittances, the Group Head for Financial Institutions and International Financial Services at NBE, Hesham Elsafty suggested that the bank aims to enhance the existing infrastructure.

Elsafty added,

”NBE’s partnership with Ripple will help to improve overall efficiency by enabling NBE to establish new alliances across wider markets with reduced cost and quicker integration time. We are very excited to announce our new partnership with Ripple and Lulu which we believe will contribute to a further acceleration of the Egypt-UAE remittances corridor.”

RippleNet Barely Used By MoneyGram Affirms Cross-Border Payments Giant

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The crypto market has been proving to be extremely volatile than ever. While Bitcoin hit new heights, Ripple [XRP] slumped to new lows. However, the altcoin was once again seen mounting. XRP found itself swimming in troubled waters following formal charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] of the United States. Ripple is once again in the news after MoneyGram shed light on its association with the payments company.

XRP Soars After Slumping By 50%

Ripple has time and again been associated with prominent cross border payments platform, MoneyGram. In a recent statement issued by MoneyGram, the platform revealed that it does not employ RippleNet or the on-demand liquidity [ODL]  platform of Ripple. This statement was in light of the recent charges from the SEC against Ripple fr engaging in an unregistered securities offering that managed to raise $1.3 billion.

The statement further read,

“The Company has not currently been notified or been made aware of any negative impact to its commercial agreement with Ripple but will continue to monitor for any potential impact as developments in the lawsuit evolve.”

MoneyGram, in its announcement, stressed the fact that it wasn’t subject to any action from the SEC as it did not utilize “the ODL platform or RippleNet for direct transfers of consumer funds.” However, the platform has been making use of Ripple’s foreign exchange [FX] since June 2019.

The SEC lawsuit had insinuated a series of unrests to the Ripple network. Several exchanges including, OSL, CrossTower as well as Beaxy put a hold on services related to XRP following the lawsuit. The charges slapped on Ripple had even led to prominent crypto exchange, Coinbase to consider delisting the altcoin.

Over the course of the past week, XRP had recorded a slump of over 50%. However, the asset seemed to be getting back on track as it was surging by over 30%, during the time of writing. XRP was priced at $0.3560 while its market cap was as low as $15.7 billion.

RippleNet Onboards One Of Vietnam’s Largest Banks

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Over the years Ripple has ventured into several countries and has formed partnerships with various banks. The pandemic made the world realize the importance of digitalization and Ripple has been striving to make its mark in different parts of the globe. Vietnam seems to be the latest interest in the payments platform.

Ripple Ventures Into Vietnam With Its Latest Partnership

A LinkedIn post by Phong Nguyen, the head of fintech and project management at Orient Commercial Joint Stock Bank [OCB] gave the world insights about Ripple’s latest collaboration. Highlighting how yesterday was an “unforgettable day” for the Nguyen, he announced that the Vietnamese bank had officially become a part of the RippleNet.

The Orient Commercial Joint Stock Bank is touted as one of the most prominent and largest banks of Vietnam as it entails assets worth $4.6 billion. The bank has reportedly been working on this collaboration for over ten months. The project allowed the bank to put forth its concentration in the mobilization of multi-division resources while “aggressively” exploring and formulating business use cases.

The post further read,

“With this investment to blockchain technology which is powered by TRiple, we target to apply new technology to business in order to cut down, expense, boost productivity and bring transparency and the best service to customers with Remittance & Cross-border payment- competitive fee, instant payment.”

OCB claims to be one of the best digital banks in Vietnam as it has over 130 branches throughout the country. The bank’s clients range from small and medium businesses to retail. The latest collaboration could further give the bank a boost. Ripple is also ought to procure acceleration in the country as the country is diving into blockchain tech. However, the crypto scene in Vietnam is rather unfavorable as buying, selling, holding as well as the issuance of crypto has been banned in the country.

Nevertheless, OCB seems to be spearheading the journey towards digitalization. Expressing his gratitude towards the latest collaboration and the Ripple Singapore team, Nguyen added,

“Hopefully, together we can deliver more impressive service to Vietnamese consumer with cutting-edge financial technology.”

Ripple Informs Customers About Cloud Capabilities as COVID-19 Continues to Wreak Havoc

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The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has brought several industries and sectors to their knees, with workers being laid off at an alarming rate. Despite the flood of capital from world governments, it has become painfully clear that we need to come up with new ideas to sustain the economy in the future.

Ripple has recently taken to the internet to find ways in which industries will not be caught off guard the next time a global catastrophe occurs. Speaking about the RippleNet Cloud, Brad Garlinghouse led organizations to point out a myriad of advantages of online data storage.

Ripple claimed that COVID-19 made it painfully clear how cumbersome traditional processes are, with an added focus on streamlining future processes. Rapid time on the market and scale to meet increased consumer demand in real-time require lean infrastructure operations and elastic, cloud-based infrastructure. Though many advances have been made in the field of technology, Ripple was critical of the process of implementation.

According to the San Fransisco based cryptocurrency organization, many firms were hesitant when it came to integrating new technologies. The latest Ripple Insights blog said:

“Cloud technology and security has significantly improved, and there’s no longer a reason for customers’ financial data to live on aging legacy systems that are inflexible and expensive to support. If there’s one thing we can learn from the pandemic, it’s that we need improved solutions. The global economic crisis proves that full-scale cloud solutions are up to the task.”

Although RippleNet Cloud was not the first to hit the market, it has become an increasingly integral part of the COVID-19 era. A RippleNet Cloud customer can go live on RippleNet five weeks faster than the others. Those who are part of the Cloud can also avoid hardware requisition or staffing which inherently boosts transaction speeds.

On-Demand Liquidity or ODL has been the ace up Ripple sleeve with several of its partners taking advantage of the technology. ODL plays an important role when it comes to settlements on the Cloud. RippleNet Cloud customers also have the option of managing their portfolio and connections much more seamlessly using just one Application Program Interface [API]. Streamlining the internal process also gives Ripple the room to make Cloud solutions cheaper than ever before.

The latest release from Ripple wanted to inform customers about the additional benefits that can be obtained from the RippleNet Cloud. Since cloud solutions are easier to deploy, organizations are set to save a significant amount of capital. Only time will tell if companies choose to go down the new path or continue to stick with the beaten path.

Korean Firm Believes Ripple is the Key to Unlocking a Whole New World for Migrants

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South Korea has emerged as one of the most exciting countries in the world of cryptocurrencies, with multiple updates and developments happening within its borders. Cryptocurrency organizations in the country have also taken on the responsibility of improving the social standards and financial structure of their citizens.

Sentbe was one such cryptocurrency company that planned to transform the financial landscape by partnering with SBI Ripple Asia. The project will work in tandem with Ripple and SBI Holdings to improve processes related to traditional banks and services.

The Brad Garlinghouse led Ripple has been a stalwart in the cross border transaction department with multiple partnerships across the board. The company has partnered with several startups across the world to provide a better infrastructure to payment corridors untapped by the financial market.

According to Sentbe, traditional financial methods have remained ineffective since its inception. J Young Lee, the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sentbe stated that there was a large group of people who were left in the lurch due to outdated banking methods. He said:

“Cross-border payments are typically expensive and time-consuming.but with RippleNet’s help we’ve made them faster, cheaper, more convenient. Now we want every hard-working migrant in Korea to know about and have the ability to access this better way of sending money home to their families.We are interested in expanding to any area where RippleNet can take us as the ease of integration makes any new corridor instantly valuable”

RippleNet has enabled organizations with their cross border transaction needs since 2018. Ripple‘s latest partnership with MoneyTap was another example of this growing demand for faster transfers in payment borders. For Sentbe, improving remittances meant overcoming four major challenges faced by migrant workers. These included factors like transparency, speed, convenience and cost of individual transactions.

Lee stated that many times, low-income workers did not know about hidden costs and transaction charges. On top of this, remittances were slow and usually took about 2-3 days to settle. Families of these workers usually find it very difficult to receive payments due to outages and a lack of transparency, stated Lee. The lower financial strata have usually flocked to digital assets in times of need, a test case being Venezuela.

Sentbe Archives has shown that they first planned to use Ripple’s XRP back in 2017, but that it was stopped because of Korea’s regulatory authority. The initial plan was to use XRP as a liquidity settlement solution. After that, the company turned to use Ripple‘s technology, such as the RippleNet, for its speed and convenience. This straightforward approach resulted in users saving more than $25 million in transaction fees.

With the RippleNet partnership, Sentbe becomes part of a wide network of banks and financial institutions. At the moment, Korean customers have the option of sending money to 25 payment corridors across the regions. Sources close to the company said that there were also plans to set up partnerships in the Latin American corridor. The need of the hour was financial inclusion and migrants also needed to be a part of this, remarked Lee.

 

Ripple: Current Remittance Solutions and Scalability Barriers in APAC

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On 14th February, the official website of Ripple published a blog on “How to Tap Rapid Growth in Asia-Pacific Remittances” as a part of their remittances series. Written by Pegah Soltani, from the Product Marketing team of Ripple, the article outlines the current remittance solutions in APAC, the scalability issues and a solution to the current challenges. 

In the past few years, Asia-Pacific regions have observed an immense growth in terms of remittances. Be that as it may, due to the current difficulties related to converting fiat from one currency to another, the high cost of transactions is neglected due to its rapid growth. 

According to Ripple, to tap into such a market that generates nearly 2 billion remittance transactions per year, it’s vital to have an international reach in addition to the locally customized services and offerings.

Remittance Solutions in APAC 

Philipines

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas [BSP] and the Philippine Government recognizes digital payments as a policy priority to enable citizens to seize the opportunities of the digital revolution.  Irrespective of the newly launched low-value instant payment system that allows users to make digital payments to bank accounts, its adoption has been mulish. This results in service providers being hooked to fiat as the primary monetary value despite the limitations.

Thailand

In 2017, PromptPay an instant payment provider registered 49M users in Thailand. As per records, from 2016 to 2018, an increase of 83% in the volume of digital payments was recorded. Compared to the Philipines, Thailand has seen greater adoption of modern payment mechanisms even with two similar digital payment providers. 

It’s imperative to credit the strong influence of PromptPay to drive the adoption of digital payments in Thailand. In the Philipines, cash is needed for a monetary transaction, while, digital payments with PromptPay is required as table-stakes in Thailand. Suggesting that, “offering money and different wallets notwithstanding PromptPay can help increase a serious edge”.

Australia 

In Australia, the market for remittance works differently as compared to the emerging APAC countries. It is primarily a “sending market” for remittances and the receivers in the Australian market possess contrasting characteristics due to its high level of financial inclusion, and income. 

According to the World Bank’s data, 98.90% of Australians are banked. Concluding that the best proposition is to “focus on bank account access through partners or via the New Payments Platform [NPP].” Considering Australia’s developed payments market, “instant and transparent payouts with 24/7/365 availability” and transparent fee structuring model would provide the best-practiced payment service.

Feasible but not scalable

The current remittance solutions these APAC countries offer are feasible but aren’t scalable globally. Some challenges they counter are:-

  • Exhaustion of working capital and human resources to develop competitive payment capabilities.
  • Lack of optimal customer experience with banking or correspondent partnerships as it requires ample time and energy.
  • High remittance fees to maintain a partnership network, and numerous integrations needed to be built and managed for destination currencies.

Solution? On-demand liquidity.

With the payment revolution that blockchain and digital assets kickstarted, remittance providers have better options than traditional-complex payment mechanisms. 

RippleNet’s on-demand liquidity [ ODL ] acts as an alternative to traditional transactions across borders. ODL uses the XRP [ XRP ] as a real-time liquidity bridge between multi-currency senders and receivers.

With this model, when a request is initiated from the sender, the send-side exchange debits the sender’s account and converts that amount into XRP. The XRP is sent across the XRP Ledger [settlement under 3 seconds] from the send-side exchange to the receive-side exchange. After this, the receive-side exchange converts XRP into the respective local currency. Ripple’s technology validates the amount received. The receive-side exchange forwards the payment to the receiver. Followed by a transaction confirmation from both ends. 

As stated by the Ripple team, customers using ODL can free up capital in the span of seconds, guaranteeing the most competitive FX rates and processing global payments at unprecedented speeds.

The advantages of fast transactions and cost-efficient transfers enables customers with an easier, safer and reliable route for cross-border remittance.

With XRP peaking to its highest value by far in 2020, the community has expressed its views on the blog. 

Dilip Rao, previously Global Head, Infrastructure Innovation at Ripple said:

Ripple Claims That XRP’s Utility Will Lead To A More Stabilized Cryptocurrency Market

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The cryptocurrency market has had its fair share of ups and downs. This includes price fluctuations as well as developments that have become all the rage. With the arrival of 2020, let us find out what crypto organizations expect from the next couple of months. 

Ripple recently released their Insights blog on how XRP’s utility can act as a sign of a stabilizing market. The blog spoke about how financial institutions were harnessing the power of blockchain and digital asset technology to see tangible results. 

The Insights blog addressed the growing digital asset economy and how institutions were taking notice of its advantages. Ripple also referenced Steve Mnuchin’s words at the WEF conference, where the US Treasury Secretary praised companies in the cross border payment space. Mnuchin’s words had a ripple effect across the entire industry, with many waiting for more positive news.

Apart from positive comments from institutional players, the market has also seen an increase in derivative trading. This has contributed to a bigger influx of capital and hence a more stable market. One of Ripple’s major game-changer has been the RippleNet, the vast network used for transactions. According to the latest Ripple blog:

“Ripple’s global network, RippleNet, is driving usage of the digital asset XRP. Banks and payment providers are joining RippleNet to leverage liquidity on-demand for cross-border payments, as an alternative to traditional pre-funding and improving processing efficiency.”

One of Ripple’s biggest wins was earned in Mexico after Bitso’s utility of the ODL. Bitso, one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges in Mexico uses the liquidity to conduct XRP/MXN transactions. ON January 29, the XRP/MXN liquidity index had broken its all-time high after climbing by 15 percent. It broke the previous record of 12.23 million to settle at its new ATH of 14.109 million.

Through these region-wise partnerships, Ripple aims to connect financial institutions with each other seamlessly. Ripple’s flatest blog also touched on how many institutional players were venturing into the digital assets field. This includes companies like TD Ameritrade, JP Morgan and Fidelity.

A major reason for this jump has been the ever-increasing growth potential of the digital asset borrowing and lending market. At present, the lending market is worth $5 billion with a projected multiplier of 5x. On the other spectrum, fiat currencies have been having trouble keeping up with customer demands. In the United States, the Federal Reserve had been blasted for printing notes at an absurd rate resulting in fears of inflation.

The Brad Garlinghouse led company has also set its eyes on growing its native cryptocurrency, XRP. Although XRP may not be having the best of times, Ripple was confident that the value will go up with the increase in volume.

Ripple Swell: Crypto organization rushes full steam ahead with RippleNet Home reveal

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The past week has seen multiple updates from Ripple and XRP due to the ongoing Swell Conference 2019. The gathering witnessed various proponents from the field come together to discuss ideas as well as reveal new technologies and products. Ripple has been stealing the limelight at the show, and with the launch of RippleNet Home, it has tried to reach further than before.

The latest product is aimed to act as a point of confluence for users in the Ripple ecosystem so that transactions and requests are processed much faster. XRP Research Center also tweeted about the latest project saying:

“Ripple unveils brand new #RippleNetHome. RippleNet Home will act as a hub where RippleNet members will be able to connect and partner with each other, analyze corridors and access data analytics on their own transactions.”

Thanks to Ripple, banks will be more competitive

Many users in the space have claimed that the project will enable banking to become real-time and competitive for the first time in history. Ripple has stated that RippleNet Home provides an entirely new experience for consumers and investors with a focus on bettering the remittance market. The feature of RippleNet Home includes direct insights into the company’s payments flow with data being transmitted across regions in real-time.

The upgrade will come packaged with intelligent suggestions that are skewed to increase competitive advantage in the dog eat dog cryptocurrency world. Users and investors will be able to explore and interact with the growth parameters of their trade with the added option of improving existing corridors or expanding into new ones.

The application will allow companies to evaluate the size of other partners and get a robust assessment of their characteristics and make better decisions. During Swell, the RippleNet Home announcement stated:

“ With our latest technology , you will be able to choose a business partner that fits into your goals. Know your partners, all with the help of RippleNet Home.”

The Brad Garlinghouse led company has ensured that in the age of social media, instant access and connectivity between different parties was the norm. With RippleNet Home, users will be able to send requests to others instantly and manage their individual responses on the application. This is said to help track the network’s growth as well as the capital inflow/outflow. The announcement concluded by saying:

“RippleNetHome will allow members to track all payments on RippleNet, increase smart automation, analyse transaction history and fully optimize local payments at individual local companies.”

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market conditions and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

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