American FinTech firm Ripple and Lithuanian FinTech firm FINCI have entered into a strategic partnership that will enable “instant and cost-effective retail remittances and business to business (B2B) payments via RippleNet’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), which leverages XRP for crypto-enabled cross border payments.”

FINCI is “a fintech company offering a range of financial services for private and business customers, across 29 countries.” Using a Mastercard-powered debit card and a mobile app (available for both iOS and Android), its customers “can easily send and receive payments from around the world, and in multiple currencies.”

On-Demand Liquidity “enables RippleNet customers to leverage the digital asset XRP to bridge two currencies in three seconds, ensuring payments are quickly sent and received in local currency on either side of the transaction.” XRP is “ideally suited for global payments because it is quicker, less costly and more scalable than any other digital asset.”

International payments — especially those in emerging markets — usually “require businesses to hold pre-funded accounts in destination currencies,” which as you can imagine is “a costly endeavor that ties up resources.” RippleNet “provides an alternative.” Although all financial institutions on the network benefit from “reliable, instant and lower-cost transactions,” the ones that “use the digital asset XRP to source liquidity can do so in seconds—freeing up capital and guaranteeing the most competitive rates available today.”

According to a press release issued on Wednesday (May 18), FINCI is “Ripple’s first customer in Lithuania and the partnership represents the opening up of a new market for Ripple’s ODL.” As a result of this partnership, FINCI’s customers will be able to “make seamless payments between Europe and Mexico while eliminating the need for FINCI to pre-fund accounts abroad, giving them the opportunity to return capital into their business.”

Mihails Kuznecovs, CEO of FINCI, had this to say:

“We’re excited to be working with Ripple to make it easier for FINCI customers to move money around the world. We share the same fundamental goal of removing the hidden inefficiencies affecting international payments. What’s more, the savings and operational improvements we’ll achieve by using Ripple’s ODL will allow us to put money back into the business and enhance our offering to our customers.“

And Sendi Young, Managing Director (Europe) at Ripple, stated:

“Cross-border payments have traditionally been slow, complex and unreliable. ODL is the first enterprise-grade solution to address these cross-border payment problems by tapping into global crypto liquidity, giving our customers a completely new way of doing business to help them grow and scale. We’re delighted that FINCI is our latest ODL deployment in Europe and are looking forward to soon announcing additional European partners who are preparing for a crypto-enabled future.“

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The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.

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