Well, here we go again. Western Union is back in the news as the rumors kick back up of a potential partnership between the largest remittance company in the world and Ripple. This is not the first time we heard about a potential partnership between the financial giants. Just last year, we published an article titled “Western Union Testing Settlement with Ripple”

Molly Shea (@mollymshea) was featured on a podcast called: Western Union in Asia Pacific & Trends in Fintech with Molly Shea. Molly joined the call to discuss the business and distribution footprint of Western Union across Asia Pacific. Molly touched on how Western Union is experimenting with blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies. The key quote is mentioned below. The keyword you need to focus on is SETTLEMENT. Not payment, but SETTLEMENT. At the 29:05 mark Molly states: “We’re piloting some settlement tests with @Ripple in certain corridors, I think the USD and the MXN”

https://analyse.asia/2019/02/09/episode-284-western-union-in-asia-pacific-trends-in-fintech-with-molly-shea/

The research confirms that many have been observing traditional payment means like SWIFT as being less than ideal due to transaction time and huge cost.

Credit Suisse published a document back in January 202 called: Payments, Processors, & FinTech If Software Is Eating the World…Payments Is Taking a Bite

On page 38, a section titled “Cryptocurrency impact on the Payments ecosystem” spoke about remittances use case for more volatile and lower volume EM markets.

As we continued to explore the documents we find on the very next page where Credit Suisse has pointed out that Western Union was testing and considering the use of XRP for cross border payments.

Credit to: https://twitter.com/DiepSanh/status/1249571090847817728?s=20