The CEO of MoneyGram said that 4 new brokers will be opened for Ripple’s ODL payments. Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, reported that the project already exceeds 300 customers.
Alex Holmes, the CEO of MoneyGram, said on November 8th, that 10% of its cross-border payments between the United States and Mexico are made through Ripple’s ODL (On Demand Liquidity) tool.
Holmes said that, as part of a strategy to quickly exploit the potential of transactions through Ripple’s ODL, MoneyGram will open more cross-border payment brokers this year. In this sense, he announced that at least four new brokers are to be established before the end of 2019.
The CEO of MoneyGram spoke with Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, while both were attending an event held in Singapore on November 7th and 8th. Holmes noted that ODL, formerly known as xRapid, has allowed MoneyGram to be at the forefront of crypto asset technology based on blockchains. The executive said that they were able to settle billions of US dollars in a matter of seconds.
Garlinghouse posted on his Twitter account that the speed of MoneyGram’s cross-border payments through Ripple’s ODL demonstrated the benefits of XRP, the native token of RippleNet. He explained that MoneyGram was performing real-time settlements (~ 60 seconds) in US dollars and Mexican pesos. He held that that pre-funded accounts would be something of the past.
The partnership between MoneyGram and Ripple was announced in mid-June of this year. Ripple Labs committed an investment of USD 50 million in MoneyGram shares. It also reported that the payment company, which is among the largest in the world, would start using XRP in its daily operations.
The alliance produced a 155% increase in the MoneyGram stock market value and an increase reaching USD 16.6 million in remittances between the United States and Mexico in September.
Later, in October, it was known that Ripple Labs led the financing round of the Mexican cryptocurrency exchange Bitso for its expansion into Argentina and Brazil. The CEO of Ripple reported that ODL, initially launched with brokers for Mexico and the Philippines, will also be enabled for Australia and then Brazil.
Garlinghouse stated that RippleNet, which is defined as a global blockchain-based network of banks and financial institutions, already has more than 300 customers. He also said that over 20 companies use XRP for cross-border payments, which indicates that the year 2019 has been the strongest for Ripple until now.
In this regard, the executive said that there has been much skepticism about how XRP can be used for settlement. Then he explained that as the industry continues to find use cases around blockchain, they have more than 20 customers using XRP for cross-border settlement, from which they are benefiting.
However, it should be noted that the valuation of XRP in the market in recent months has shown no signs of growth. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the Ripple token reached this year’s all-time high this year of USD 0.48 in the month of June, about 10 days after its partnership with MoneyGram. Since then its price has fallen 43.75% to its current level of USD 0.27.
By Willmen Blanco
