XRP News: Ripple Continues to Add International Partners

Ripple has had no problem when it comes to establishing high-profile partnerships, and it appears as though that trend is only continuing. The San-Francisco based technology company, founded in 2012, has had quite the year, and recently has made some strategic partnerships with companies all around the world.

Omni Users Can Now Accept XRP

Earlier this year, Ripple announced that they wanted to invest in businesses with “proven entrepreneurs” through an initiative called Xpring, which is ultimately meant to fund and embolden entrepreneurs who plan on joining the XRP ecosystem. Co-founded by Stefan Thomas, a former CTO of Ripple, and Thomas Macleod, Omni was one of the companies funded through Xpring. Omni also has Chris Larsen, Ripple’s co-founder, on its board of advisors.

The startup now allows users to accept XRP, which is significant because this is the first time an individual can actually receive XRP outside of any exchange.

Omni, based in the Bay Area, aims to capitalize on the sharing economy phenomenon by allowing users to share and rent out items. It is marketed as an “on demand storage company.”

The company believes that users will benefit by earning money from items that they don’t particularly need, and encourages them to live “lighter.” The sharing economy has certainly heated up the past decade, responsible for some of the most successful startups in the country, such as Uber and Airbnb, both of which are valued in the billions.

Both Thomas and Larsen have invested an undisclosed amount of XRP into Omni during a $25 million round of funding earlier this year, and the company had declined to disclose the exact nature of its alliance with Ripple.

Moneynetint Joins RippleNet

Moneynetint, a London-based company that provides foreign exchange services, is the latest company to sign on to use Ripple’s decentralized payment technology. The firm focuses on corporate clients, and is the latest member in Ripple’s ongoing collaboration with over 100 banks, payment providers, and remittance operators.

It is no surprise that Ripple’s technology has appealed to the financial sector, considering the fact that XRP can help settle transactions in seconds, something that could otherwise take days using the traditional financial system.

Yishay Trif, chief executive of Moneynetint, offered another reason why the partnership made sense, pointing out that RippleNet makes it easier to build banking relationships.

He stated:

the processes of interfacing and approval between financial institutions, previously taking months or even years, are now significantly reduced to a matter of days to a few weeks.

The director of account management at Ripple, Nadeem Ladki, stated:

By leveraging Ripple’s blockchain technology, Moneynetint will now be able to simplify and reduce the FX conversion rates for their customers, increase the speed of settlement, and offer services to new markets that would otherwise have been too difficult or too costly to reach in the past.

This follows the news that the first cross-border payment out of Malaysia occurred thanks to MoneyMatch, a fintech company based in Kuala Lumpur, which utilized RippleNet integration for the transaction.

With these developments, it’s clear that Ripple continues to make strategic partners globally in order to establish themselves as a leading company in the global payments sector.