Two more payment providers, Singapore’s InstaReM and Brazil’s BeeTech, have joined Ripple’s decentralized global payment network, RippleNet, via Ripple’s xVia product, and announced a partnership that will result in a payment corridor between Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Through this partnership, instaReM (who name is short for “instant remittance”) customers will be able to send real-time payments to Latin America, while BeeTech customers will benefit from being able to send payments to the 60 markets across the world (Asia, Europe, Oceania, and North America) that InstaReM supports.

InstaReM’s co-founder and CEO Prajit Nanu, had this to say:

“We are very excited to partner with Brazil’s BeeTech over RippleNet. The connectivity that Ripple’s innovative blockchain network provides will allow us to offer our customers –  including corporates and small businesses – quick, hassle-free payments into BeeTech’s markets.”

Fernando Pavani, founder and CEO of BeeTech wa also pleased with this partnership: 

“This partnership is fantastic news for our business customers, who will benefit from Ripple-powered payments into InstaReM’s Southeast Asian markets and beyond. This partnership on RippleNet provides our customers a one-stop shop experience, including the ability to send payments and access new suppliers across more than 60 markets through xVia – a simple API connection.” 

According to Ripple, here are the benefits of using xVia:

  • A Standard Interface. “xVia provides a single, efficient API to connect seamlessly to financial institutions on RippleNet.”
  • Better Customer Experience. Customers benefit from faster, cheaper, and more easily traceable money transfers.
  • Rich Payment Data. “xVia enables the attachment of rich data to payments, eradicating verification and reconciliation issues.”
  • Real-time Settlement. xVia enables :real-time settlement from the point of origin through to the destination country.”
  • Global Reach. “xVia will serve as a standard gateway to any financial institution on RippleNet.”
  • Massive Cost Efficiency. xVia’s single point of integration dramatically lowers development costs (since it eliminates the need to build custom connections) and manual reconciliation costs (since we get lower failure results as a result of needing to maintain only one connection).

This news about InstaReM and BeeTech joining RippleNet comes roughly one month after five other money transfer operators – FairFX, RationalFX, Exchange4Free, UniPAY, and MoneyMatch – became xVia customers and joint the RippleNet family (currently consisting of around 120 financial institutions).

On Tuesday, 29 May 2018, Ripple announced via Twitter that it had managed to sign up yet another bank, Kuwait’s largest bank, the National Bank of Kuwait (NBK), to use its xCurrent product. When interviewed by CNBC on Wednesday, Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, had this to say about Ripple’s progress this year:

“It's really been an incredible 2018 for us. We are now signing up more than one bank to a production contract per week… So momentum continues to build, and the dynamic there is that there's network effects, the more participants, the more value there is in joining. So we are seeing that momentum build.”

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple

 

Featured Image Credit: “Ripple cryptocurrency physical coin” by “Marco Verch” via Flickr; licensed under “CC BY 2.0”