In the efforts to speed up and deduct fees in transferring money, the international money transfer firm, MoneyGram is teaming up with Ripple to test its xRapid service for international payments.

The recent blog post published in ripple confirms MoneyGram’s interest to integrate Ripple’s XRP altcoin in its payment system. This is not the first time for Ripple, a fintech startup to partner with world’s largest financial institutions. Ripple already supports Standard Chartered and the Royal Bank of Canada. In its most recent announcement, Ripple disclosed a deal to partner with Santander and Amex to offer blockchain solutions that will increase the speed of payments between United States and the UK.

Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse has shown satisfaction, saying “clients will be able to move money as fast as information” in his comment to a company’s blog post.

It’s said in a press release that the Ripple/MoneyGram partnership will markedly reduce transaction fees to less than that of Bitcoin which currently stands at $30 per transaction. Additionally, XRP shows a jet speed transaction time, which is estimated to be 2-3 seconds. This is unlike Bitcoin transactions which are well known for taking ages to go through.

MoneyGram CEO, Alex Holmes has assured that his company will use xRapid in a test program. In Holme’s words; “We’re hopeful it will increase efficiency and improve services to MoneyGram’s customers”

Surely, the Ripple and MoneyGram innovation is a project to watch in 2018. If the project succeeds, companies will now be able to transfer funds between countries without having pre-funded accounts. This isn’t the case for existing money transfer companies which require having pre-funded accounts in different countries to enable transactions.

XRP celebrated its new year with price swings and according to MarketCap list, Ripple is currently the third largest cryptocurrency in the world.

Ripple has announced several partnerships recently. Who do you think will be the next to partner with Ripple? Share your thoughts below.