Ripple Partners With Travelex For Cross-Border Settlements In LATAM Region

Ripple Labs, one of the most popular blockchain companies in the world, has continued to expand its services in the industry.

With the company looking to bolster its payment catalogue, it has announced a major international partnership that could improve cross-border transaction settlements in the Latin American region.

Cutting Transaction Times Exponentially

On Thursday, blockchain giant Ripple Labs announced that it had struck a new deal with a foreign exchange company, Travelex, to integrate its On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) to facilitate cross-border transactions between partners. According to the official announcement, Travelex Bank will be Ripple’s first banking partner in the Latin American region and the first bank with permission from the Central Bank of Brazil to operate foreign exchange transactions exclusively.

With the new partnership, Travelex is expected to integrate the ODL tool to enable quick and cheap cross-border transactions, which would be settled using Ripple’s XRP token. Both partners believe that this system should help reduce the time required for cross-border transactions to be completed, bringing the threshold down from three to five days to mere hours.

Travelex built an infrastructure to implement the tool for transactions between Mexico and Brazil. The Wise payment service has been the de facto leader in payment processing between both countries, but even transactions using this channel can take between one to five business days, according to Wise’s blog. By bolstering this process, Ripple hopes to usher in a new age of financial efficiency and speed – especially for businesses that depend significantly on foreign transactions for their operations.

Speaking on the decision to move into the Brazilian market. Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse explained that they were motivated by the country’s recent crypto-friendly stance. The blockchain boss highlighted the country’s status as one of Latin America’s largest economies and business hubs and its openness to crypto and devotion to industry-wide innovation.

With Brazil’s market now exploding with opportunities, Ripple is looking to help improve crypto uptake and contribute to the solving of several major consumer pain points. While the payment channel between Brazil and Mexico will be the first to be opened up, Travelex has confirmed that it will also be looking to integrate the ODL tool for several other countries – as well as use cases – as the need arises.

The Expansion Continues For Ripple

The announcement marks just the latest in what appears to be a period of significant expansion for Ripple and its remittance technology. The service has gained massive popularity in the payment and private banking sectors, using XRP as a bridge between currencies, eliminating the need to pre-fund destination accounts, and reducing overall operating expenses.

Last month, FOMO Pay – a Singapore-based institutional digital payment solution provider, confirmed that it would also integrate the ODL tool into its catalogue.

Per an announcement, FOMO Pay will use ODL to improve its cross-border treasury settlements. The company had been using traditional payment systems to settle international transactions in dollar and euro trades but had been disappointed by the lag in payment processing – with some settlements taking upwards of two days to get completed. With ODL, FOMO Pay hopes to optimize this process and significantly cut transaction times and costs.

As for Ripple, the company has also been infused in conversations over possibly expanding beyond payment processing. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the San Francisco-based company was weighing the possibility of acquiring embattled crypto lender Celsius.

One of the poster children for the market crash that happened this year, Celsius Network, went bust after suffering exposure to the now-defunct hedge fund Three Arrows Capital – as well as suffering a run on its services after temporarily suspending withdrawals. The company has been working towards restructuring since filing for bankruptcy in July, and Ripple appears to have emerged as a possible acquisition option – along with rival lender Nexo and crypto exchange FTX.

Speaking with the news source, a spokesperson for Ripple explained that they are actively looking for merger and acquisition opportunities to scale their operations. While the spokesperson didn’t comment on whether they would be looking to purchase Celsius outrightly or in part, it would be interesting to see whether they pursue this opportunity.

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