XRP: Ripple has a global expansion plan for xRapid

Asheesh Birla, the senior vice-president of product at San Francisco-based Ripple, recently revealed that the company has aggressive expansion plans for xRapid, its XRP-powered crypto remittance platform. During an ask-me-anything session hosted by Ripple’s Ginger Baker, Birla said that the company is in the process of expanding its cross-border payments platform to more countries across the globe.

He said: “On demand liquidity is available today in Mexico and the Philippines. So far, the positive responses from our customers in those two countries has (sic) been overwhelming. But we are working on the next set of destinations, which we will be announcing in hopefully short order here. I know our product teams and marketing and engineering teams are working hard to light up those next set of destinations so that we can provide our customers with increased choice in terms of global expansion.”

Ripple can partner with cryptocurrency exchanges across the globe that are capable of accepting fiat currency from banks. It then converts fiat money into XRP and transmits it to the destination, where it is instantly converted back into fiat. Ripple had struck a deal with international payments providers Mercury FX and IDT Corporation in January last year to test out the XRP-powered xRapid platform. Last month, Mercury FX sent the first xRapid payment to the Philippines on behalf of a UK-based client in a transaction that took just a few seconds to execute at a lower fee.

Money Gram, another major player in the payments industry, is also using xRapid along with Mexican bank Cuallix. American Express is one more marquee name that’s partnering with Ripple’s XRP-enabled real-time payments platform. Now that Ripple has already proven that XRP-based xRapid is capable of changing the cross-border payments landscape because of low costs and a faster turnaround, it won’t be surprising to see the service expand rapidly into more countries as Birla suggests.