SendFriend will be using XRP for cross-border remittances targeting the Philippine market. The consumer payments platform started to work with Ripple short time ago. At the same time, SendFriend is backed by MIT Media Lab, Barclays, Mastercard and Ripple.
SendFriend Starts Working with Ripple and XRP
The CEO and founder of SendFriend announced at the Barclays Accelerator in New York that they will be launching during the first quarter of 2019. According to the company, the current banking system is not offering proper services to companies around the world.
This is why Lighton explained that they will be the first international consumer payment solution compliant with U.S. regulations. Additionally, it will be based on top of the blockchain.
Sendfriend (a newly announced xRapid customer) will go live with their service in Q1, 2019
David Lighton, CEO of Sendfriend
Dec18 pic.twitter.com/cp0mbkrLoI— Bull Diep (@DiepSanh) January 9, 2019
During the presentation, Lighton showed how slow and costly payment services such as Western Union are. A person is able to send money abroad with this company but the costs are high and transactions can take days to settle. This is due to the fact that the firm needs to send money through different banking institutions around the world. After it, the funds would finally reach the desired country.
About the partnership that its company signed with Ripple, he commented:
“We are excited to partner with Ripple to do just that. Through our partnership, we are bringing our customers a next-generation, blockchain payment solution that leverages XRP to address many of the efficiency and equity problems with existing remittances. For them, that means cheaper and faster payments.”
Ripple decided to offer support to SendFriend by giving them $1 million for marketing expenses. With SendPay, funds can be sent around the world in just seconds (almost in real time) using blockchain technology. Additionally, the company would be leveraging the XRP cryptocurrency to improve their services even further.
Using XRP, SendFriends will be able to source liquidity on-demand when sending payments on behalf of their customers.
Ripple is expanding in the market, as well as XRP. Ripple Labs recently announced that several new banking and financial institutions have joined RippleNet. Furthermore, some of these companies will also be using the XRP digital asset.
Back in 2018, Ripple announced the results for the xRapid product. Asheesh Birla, the Senior Vice President and Product Management at Ripple, said that the product is able to improve transaction times and reduce costs.
According to Mr. Birla, financial institutions saved between 40% to 70% and reduced transaction times to 2-3 minutes.
