Despite its legal troubles in the U.S., Ripple continues its push into the Asia Pacific payments market with its latest partnership with Novatti, a digital banking and payments company that is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.
According to a Ripple blog post, Novatti has joined Ripple’s global payment network tapping RippleNet’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service — which leverages its XRP token for instant, cross-border payments — to make remittance payments from Australia to Southeast Asia cheaper and faster.
The partnership with Novatti follows Ripple’s acquisition of a 40% stake in Asian cross-border payments specialist Tranglo last month as part of the expansion of its RippleNet global payments network.
“Ripple’s APAC momentum continuing strong with Novatti – iRemit sending payments through ODL,” tweeted Asheesh Birla, general manager of RippleNet, Ripple’s global payments network for financial institutions.
The partnership, signed last December, initially focused on remittances between Australia and the Philippines through iRemit, the Filipino-owned remittance service provider.
The Philippines is the third largest remittance-receiving country in Asia, after India and China, with Filipinos abroad sending home US$33.19 billion in 2020, according to the blog post.
Asia-Pacific’s digital money transfer market that Ripple is targeting is huge and has massive potential for growth. It could be worth up to US$269.78 billion by 2026, according to a report by Allied Market Research.
Now that the partnership is live and generating revenue, Novatti said it is planning to bring the service to more customers and countries in Southeast Asia.
See related article: Digital payments — not cash — is now king in Asia’s payment ecosystem
“Forming our partnership with Ripple was part of Novatti’s broader strategy to develop a banking and payments ecosystem that enables our existing platforms to scale quickly,” said Peter Cook, managing director of Novatti in an announcement earlier this month.
“In addition to Ripple, Novatti’s ecosystem now includes partnerships with world-leading payment and fintech companies including Visa, Apple Pay, Alipay, UnionPay International, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Marqeta, and Decta,” Cook added.
Last December, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Ripple, alleging that its sale of XRP was an unregistered securities offering worth over US$1.38 billion. Crypto exchanges in the U.S. delisted XRP afterward, but XRP is still traded and Ripple continues to enjoy strong support in other parts of the world, especially Asia. The company has also been ramping up its efforts to scale its payments business and the use of XRP as a “neutral bridge currency” for central bank digital currencies.
See related article: Ripple recasts embattled XRP as a ‘bridge’ currency for CBDCs
XRP is currently the fourth largest cryptocurrency in the world with a total market value about US$80 billion, according to CoinGecko data. XRP prices corrected today during Asian trading from its three-year high of US$1.92 on April 14 and is currently trading at US$1.73 as of publishing time. XRP started the month at about US$0.55.