On Wednesday (February 26), European online remittance firm Azimo announced that it had partnered with Californian FinTech firm Ripple.
Azimo was founded in January 2012 by Michael Kent (currently, the Executive Chairman). It has offices in London, the United Kingdom, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and in Krakow, Poland.
In the UK, it is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), “a financial regulatory body” that “operates independently of the UK Government, and is financed by charging fees to members of the financial services industry.”
Via its website and mobile apps for iOS and Android, it allows transfer of funds to over 200 countries and territories worldwide (60+ currencies).
Azimo’s press release said that for payments into the Philippines, “one of the top remittance destinations globally,” it is using Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) solution.
Although RippleNet members do not need to use ODL service, which uses the digital asset XRP as the bridge currency for cross-currency payments, doing so results in additional cost and time savings, as confirmed by Ripple’s existing ODL users, such as MoneyGram.
Richard Ambrose, the CEO of Azimo, stated:
“We’ve been interested for a long time in the potential of digital assets like XRP to make cross-border payments better for customers.
“Ripple’s ODL solution has significantly reduced the cost and delivery time for cross-border transfers, and our customers are seeing the benefits.
“As more banks and financial institutions use ODL, we believe it has the potential to replace current methods of foreign exchange trading and to reduce settlement time to close to zero.”
Marcus Treacher, SVP of Customer Success at Ripple, had this to say:
“It’s of the utmost importance to partner with companies who share the same vision and passion for changing the way that money moves around the world today. Azimo is challenging the status quo by leveraging RippleNet with ODL to provide fast, low-cost, reliable and easy payments for its customers worldwide.”
In a blog post published yesterday, Ripple talked about this new partnership:
“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.”
Ripple also had this to say about its ODL service:
“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.”
Featured Image Courtesy of Azimo
