Financial news

Crypto firm Ripple is expanding its payments solution beyond financial institutions, deciding to now serve corporate customers including Nutrisource, Oceanus and more. Ripple plans to cover a variety of segments including trade, agriculture, e-commerce, technology and supply chain with the move. 

The crypto firm is looking to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper and more transparent. It explained that in its current state, cross-border payments are slow and unreliable; charging expensive fees. The average fee for consumers to send money across borders is around seven per cent. This would cause a charge of $14 for every $200 sent. The firm recognised that the fee is incurred by the receiver, which especially affects the unbanked. Because of this, Ripple looked to reduce this issue to improve financial inclusion.

Remittances are the primary source of income for many unbanked individuals. Because of this, Ripple looked to address this with the highest priority level. The firm gradually increased its product offerings for use cases limited by the legacy financial system. Ripple said that it was continuing to work on use cases including internal treasury, vendor, salary and bulk payments.

Brendan Berry, payments product lead at Ripple, commented on the need for change. He said: “As the world becomes more global and connected, be it a distributed workforce or an international base of suppliers or customers, companies around the world are burdened by the broken state of payments. After years of working closely with payment service providers, banks, fintechs and financial institutions, we intimately understand the challenges our customers face on a daily basis.”

Berry continued: “Over time, a broad base of customers beyond just financial institutions have begun asking for help in solving challenges with cross-border payments. Notably, many corporate partners now want the benefits of Ripple’s crypto-enabled cross-border payments solution. Our goal is to serve any corporate customer, regardless of industry, who can benefit from faster, cheaper and more efficient cross-border payments.”

The on-demand liquidity solution

Ripple’s ‘On-Demand Liquidity’ (ODL) service looks to enable instant payment settlement; eliminating the need for pre-funded destination accounts. The crypto company are offering the service to corporate customers, hoping to make it easier to grow and scale businesses.

Recently, Ripple announced it had expanded ODL to almost 40 payout markets worldwide. New regions accessed included Africa, Argentina, Belgium, and Israel. Meanwhile, existing customers of the fiat-based ‘RippleNet‘ upgraded to ODL in regions across the world. Countries that upgraded included Australia, Brazil, Singapore, the UAE, the UK and the US.

Murari Rakshit, CEO of agriculture technology solution provider Nutrisource, explained the benefits of Ripple’s solution. He said: “The financial solution offered by Ripple is innovative, competitive, hassle-free and supportive to businesses like ours who are transitioning from startup to mature organisation.

“This is a game changer in providing financial support for companies who are interested in a customisable and need-based digital funding solution, beyond what traditional financing solutions can offer today. We believe Ripple is the right financial partner to propel that growth.”

Duane Ho, group CFO at food tech corporation Oceanus Group Limited, commented on the company’s decision to partner with Ripple. He explained: “At Oceanus Group, we value financial partners that provide us with flexible, cutting-edge payment and liquidity solutions. It is for this reason that we are very excited to tap into the benefits of Ripple’s liquidity hub.”