Accessing a $600 Billion Global Remittance Market With XRP
The world’s second-largest money transmitting company, MoneyGram, has announced that it has already begun using the XRP cryptocurrency through Ripple’s cross-border platform, xRapid, heralding a positive reaction from XRP investors and enthusiasts.
xRapid is one part of three components that make up the RippleNet platform. It uniquely uses a digital asset, XRP, to offer on-demand liquidity, lowering costs and built for enterprise usage.
Source: Ripple
MoneyGram’s adoption of XRP follows a strategic partnership with Ripple, which involves a capital commitment to MoneyGram of $50 million and a purchase of MoneyGram’s shares at a generous premium.
Results from transactions conducted through xRapid are providing positive results for MoneyGram and its users. CEO Alex Holmes stated the efficiencies from using xRapid and XRP on an earnings call, primarily the speed of transactions and potential use cases to be explored with blockchain technology in the future.
“Ripple will become our key partner for cross-border settlement using digital assets, and we’ve already started executing trades ready started executing trades.
This is really cool!” – MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes, Earnings Call 03:20, Slides 6, 7
Source: http://ir.moneygram.com/static-files/2dda97ce-90b3-4b9d-9fa7-c6b3efb278f7
Rival Western Union snubbed Ripple’s advances in the past but is now facing financial problems, with news of cuts to staff emerging this month. SWIFT is also seeking to stay ahead of Ripple’s payment technology with its own cross-border platform.
Many in the cryptocurrency community still remain doubtful of Ripple and XRP, which will likely not change anytime soon because Ripple’s primary clients are central banks, which hold (via escrow accounts) over 60% of the total supply of XRP.
Even so, adoption of digital assets such as XRP, BTC, and others give us a glimpse of the disruptive potential cryptocurrencies can achieve in the long-term.
This is not investment advice; please always do thorough research and only invest what you are willing to lose, especially in times of uncertainty.
