SBI Holdings announced in its Q4 2020 report that it will partner Ripple and XRP for cross-border payments, according to reports. The payment arm of SBI Holdings, SBI Remit has before now cooperated with Ripple’s partner MoneyGram to facilitate international payments. This has gone on for more than a decade.
However right now, the company wishes to leverage Ripple’s remittance settlement using Decentralized Ledger Technology (DLT) as the main service provider for payments. Part of the report read:
“SBI Remit, a subsidiary of SBI FinTech Solutions, endeavors to secure dominance in the international remittance market by cooperating with overseas financial institutions and utilizing DLT of U.S. Ripple.”
Cooperation to strengthen payment services
Ripple’s relationship with SBI Holdings goes way back to a business partnership in which Ripple invested in the company. According to the report, Ripple invested in SBI’s payment network, MoneyTap. News of the investment came out in October last year and SBI now confirms that Ripple is its biggest external investor with 33% share.
“Money Tap accepted an investment and two directors from the U.S. Ripple, in order to strengthen technical cooperation, as well as the advancement of initiatives related to international remittances.
Acceptance of investment from Rippleaccelerates the introduction of the service to regional financial institutions, as well as the development of new services.”
Ripple has become famous for facilitating international remittance. The company has established itself in the payment industry as a leader to be reckoned with and boasts of having over 300 corporate clients. XRP, the 4th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is the native token used on the payment network RippleNet to provide liquidity for transfers in billions of dollars.
Before now, MoneyGram in which Ripple invested $50 million last year has been the preferred payment processor for SBI. During this time, Ripple’s payment network was only used for remittance settlement between Japan and Thailand. However, by this partnership, RippleNet will be the “go to” network for cross-border remittances for SBI going forward.
Ripple and XRP making progress despite lawsuits
On 22 December 2020, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple and its top executives Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen accusing them of illegally selling an unregistered security, XRP and profiting from it. The lawsuit caused many exchanges to delist XRP and Grayscale removed it from its large cap fund assets. As a result, the price suffered a serious crash, reached below $0.2 at some point.
However recently, the price bounced back gaining at least 80%, which suggests that investors may be regaining confidence in the cryptocurrency once again. SBI’s adoption of the same company for its remittance services may further boost this confidence, especially as the case is still ongoing. Perhaps eventually things could turn around for Ripple and XRP if it continues to beat the expectations. XRP currently trades at $0.38 after a nosedive from thoroughly that took it to over $0.7 in the last few days. Things may still get better if an alt season kicks in.