Ripple’s ODL to Aid iRemit Process Australia-Philippines Remittances
Ripple continues to build in the Asia Pacific despite legal troubles in the United States through its new partnership with payments expert Novatti Group.
First announced in December last year, Novatti has joined Ripple’s global payment network and committed to tap into RippleNet’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service, which leverages the cryptocurrency XRP for instant cross-border payments. Last mile remittances benefit if both they and their cross border partner uses XRP, as it frees up their businesses from holding pre-funded accounts in destination currencies, which has been a costly and slow endeavor.
“Those accounts tie up capital all over the world, adding expense to every transaction. And even with these accounts to facilitate payments, transactions can still take days to fully settle without any visibility into the status of the payment,” Ripple said in a statement.
ODL enables instant cross-border payments without the need for pre-funding. Using XRP, Ripple said ODL can instantly bridge currencies, unlocks capital and reduces operational costs. “This unlocks capital and reduces operational costs, savings that can be passed on to customers and put to use in more effective ways,” Ripple added.
Ripple and Novatti’s effort first targets the Australia-Philippines corridor through a partnership with iRemit, a Filipino remittance service provider which also holds e-money and virtual currency exchange licenses. While the Philippines is the third largest recipient of remittances around the world, the amount of fees per transaction is significant to the recipient, coupled with the delay of around 2 – 3 business days before the beneficiary can receive the funds sent to them.
With the partnership now live, Novatti said it expects “several thousand transactions” per month through RippleNet and expects the service to scale quickly to other countries in Southeast Asia.
In a previous report, Ripple’s then-Senior Vice President of Global Operations Eric van Miltenburg said remittances to the Philippines still experience slow transfer time and higher transaction costs, then argued that blockchain technology can help minimize these problems. When asked about XRP’s volatility in a 2019 interview, Miltenburg noted that since transactions are almost instantaneous, there is a very minimal volatility during the moment of conversion and when the user receives the money.
This is a positive development for the embattled fintech company, which is currently in a legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which charges Ripple of selling unregistered securities to the public.
BitPinas is requesting a comment from iRemit about this news.
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