Ripple and remittance company will offer cross-border service between the US UU. and Mexico

Key facts:

The new association is expected to reduce settlement time and cut some costs.

No date has been set for the implementation of the service.

Ripple's technology will be integrated into a new remittance service based on the XRP cryptocurrency, which the International Money Express (Intermex) company plans to implement.

In an information released on February 4, Ripple announces a partnership with Intermex through which this company will take advantage of the RippleNet platform, a network of institutional payment providers that uses the various payment solutions with Ripple,to develop "faster and more transparent cross-border remittance services" between the United States and Mexico.

The new partnership is expected reduce settlement time and cut some costs in sending remittances. It will also give Intermex access to the Ripple ODL service (on demand liquidity or on demand liquidity), which uses the XRP cryptocurrency as a bridge for sending and receiving cryptocurrencies, accelerating settlement times and decreasing costs to “fractions of a cent".

It is not clear when Intermex will put RippleNet integration in production mode. The CEO, Bob Lisey, only said the company hopes to "implement new solutions in RippleNet and ODL to help drive growth and better efficiency."

The remittance corridor between the United States and Mexico is the most important in the region, and one of the largest in the world.Mexico received more than USD 36,000 million in remittances in 2019, mainly from the United States. Intermex processes more than 30 million transactions per year from more than 100,000 locations in this corridor, according to the announcement.

MoneyGram, an American financial services company that first tested XRP in early 2018, announced in November that it would expand its ODL service to more remittance brokers. The CEO of the firm, Alex Holmes, said at the Ripple Swell 2019 Conference that More than 10% of remittances from its US and Mexican broker had been processed using ODL.

That same year, Ripple completed its acquisition of a $ 50 million shareholding in MoneyGram.