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A consumer payments platform backed by MIT Media Lab, Barclays, Mastercard and Ripple is launching its XRP-powered payment service in Q1 2019.

SendFriend will start by targeting the Philippines to give expatriates a cost-effective way to send money back home.

The project, winner of the MIT Media Lab Translational Innovation Alliance Award, was developed at MIT by CEO and founder David Lighton.

At the Barclays Accelerator demo day in New York, powered by Techstars, Lighton said SendFriend will execute cross-border payments in about six seconds, giving customers an overall cost savings of 65% compared to traditional cross-border payment companies.

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SendFriend says its complete list of backers includes Barclays, Techstars, Ripple, MIT Media Lab, Mahindra Finance and the MasterCard Foundation.

Ripple launched xRapid for commercial use in October. The payment solution is designed to utilize XRP to power cross-border transactions between financial institutions in real-time.