Ripple has been under fire after the American Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued the company raising questions about the viability of its token, XRP. Following this, a slew of crypto exchanges pulled out the digital asset causing the value to tumble.
However, this hardly dampened the firm’s ambitions to scale up. In a new announcement, the blockchain payment provider said that it has collaborated with Malaysian fintech Mobile Money in a bid to establish more efficient remittance between Malaysia and Bangladesh. The new tie-up will ensure that the Bangladeshi population is provided with a more frictionless cross-border payment experience.
Supervised by the Bank of Bangladesh, this deal will mean that Mobile Money will get connected to Bangladesh’s financial service company bKash through the RippleNet payments network enabling them to use features including wallet-to-wallet transactions. Consequently, Ripple could channel a share of an estimated $20 bn in remittance flows to Bangladesh.
To add on, with this new association, the user base of both firms is expected to increase by at least 20%. Commenting on this partnership, BKash CEO Kamal Quadir said:
“bKash is happy to have partnered with Ripple in collaboration with Mutual Trust Bank of Bangladesh to deliver a cost-effective, fast, transparent and reliable remittance sending experience to more than 10 million non-resident Bangladeshis all over the world.”
He believes that the use of legal channels such as RippleNet to remit money will boost the fintech ecosystem and its current 45 million user base.
Furthermore, the ongoing pandemic has consumers across the world become more tech-savvy and adept to online payments. As Mobile Money co-founder Lee Eng Sia put it:
“More than ever, the pandemic has demonstrated that there is a strong need for remittance solutions that enable people to transfer money anytime and anywhere.”
Given how remittances to Bangladesh reached an all-time high of $18.2 bn in 2020, it indeed was the need of the hour. The question is that while the partnership comes at a tricky time as Ripple grapples with the lawsuit, will it help the firm to gain more support from the crypto community?
