Ripple Labs, a leading player in the cryptocurrency industry, is broadening its reach in Southeast Asia through a strategic alliance with SBI Remit, a subsidiary of the Japanese financial behemoth SBI Group. This collaboration aims to facilitate international money transfers to three Southeast Asian countries: the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia, utilizing digital asset XRP.
The initiative will enable residents of these countries to receive international money transfers in their local currencies. SBI Remit will process the remittance requests from customers and pass them on to SBI VC Trade (a crypto exchange subsidiary of SBI Group), which will then transmit XRP in real-time to fulfill these requests. To make this possible, SBI Remit has joined forces with Tranglo, a key player in the global fund transfer sector, to ensure that recipients can obtain their funds in their respective local currencies.
SBI Group, which manages assets worth $138 billion, has specifically chosen these three nations due to the high and growing rate of remittances they receive. SBI VC Trade stated in a recent blog post that the share of remittances going to bank accounts in these countries is substantial and is expected to increase further in the future:
“SBI Remit has been using Ripple Payments provided by Ripple for its international remittance services since 2017. Additionally, in 2021, by introducing solutions using crypto assets in Ripple Payments, we will be the first in Japan to provide international remittance services that utilize the crypto asset XRP (*2) as a bridge currency between two legal currencies. Launched for crypto asset wallets in the Philippines. This time, we will expand the range of international remittance services using XRP to bank accounts in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia. In these countries, the share of remittances sent to bank accounts is high, and we expect the introduction of this service to accelerate in the future.“
The use of XRP as a bridge currency offers several advantages, according to SBI. It allows for rapid and cost-effective money transfers. Moreover, it provides scalability features, such as the ability to send funds to Ripple’s global partners effortlessly. SBI believes that leveraging XRP in this manner will significantly enhance their competitive edge in the international remittance market.
At the time of writing, XRP is trading at around $0.493, up 1.82% in the past 24-hour period.
Featured Image via Midjourney
