Ripple, the cross-border payment network powered by distributed ledger technology (DLT), today announced a new partnership with European digital money transfer service Azimo. The company has launched with Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service as part of its remittance capabilities into The Philippines, with plans to expand the use of ODL across more corridors this year.
ODL leverages the digital asset XRP to bridge two currencies within seconds, ensuring payments are quickly sent and received in local currency on either side of a transaction. In addition, ODL has the potential to reduce liquidity costs by up to 60% compared to traditional banking solutions, guaranteeing some of the most competitive FX rates available.
“We’ve been interested for a long time in the potential of digital assets like XRP to make cross-border payments better for customers,” said Richard Ambrose, CEO of Azimo. “Ripple’s ODL solution has significantly reduced the cost and delivery time for cross-border transfers, and our customers are seeing the benefits.”
The Azimo partnership marks an important step in solving the challenges with slow and expensive cross-border payments-especially remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries, where the need for fast, low-cost transactions are a necessity. According to the World Bank, The Philippines are the fourth-largest recipient of remittances from migrant workers, averaging $34 billion remittance flows in 2018. Through this partnership, Azimo is seizing the opportunity to provide remitters with a better solution to send money into this region.
For Azimo’s customers and the millions of recipients in The Philippines, time and cost are vital components to daily life—yet these elements are often at odds in today’s global payments, due to the complex challenges associated with moving money between currencies. RippleNet’s ODL service is changing the status quo by enabling financial institutions to process cross-border payments at unprecedented speeds.
Dozens of RippleNet customers are leveraging ODL for faster cross-border payments including Viamericas, FlashFX, and goLance. The service is currently available in corridors including USD-MXN, USD-PHP, AUD-USD, and PHP, and from EUR-USD with plans for additional corridors opening across APAC, EMEA, and LATAM in 2020.
In partnership with Azimo and Ripple’s 300+ customers worldwide, loved ones are able to quickly send money home to all corners of the world. Taken together, the benefits of speed, cost and certainty allow those leveraging ODL to compete more effectively and provide their customers with a faster and more reliable way of sending money home.
