Ripple’s cross border payments token, XRP, has surged a whopping 15 percent since the beginning of the week. A new partnership with a big Latin American money remittance services company is driving momentum.

XRP has had a terrible year in 2019. It was one of the worst-performing high cap crypto assets, dumping 48 percent over the twelve-month period. The coin started the year trading at $0.375 and ended it below $0.200.

This week has seen much better performance and, although XRP has not managed to reclaim the psychological $0.30 barrier yet, it appears to be on the way to do so — with a 15 percent surge since Monday to reach a ten-week high of $0.273 during Asian trading today.

Ripple Intermex Partnership

The momentum has been driven by a partnership with NASDAQ-listed International Money Express Inc. The leading money remittance services company is focused primarily on the Latin America and Caribbean corridor, according to the official announcement. [GlobeNewsWire]

The partnership will enable Intermex to utilize Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product through RippleNet, the firm’s international network of financial partners.

The product leverages Ripple’s XRP token as a bridge between the sending and receiving currencies in real-time. Its primary function is to alleviate the need for pre-funding accounts in cross border payments.

International Money Express Inc. allows customers to send money primarily from the United States to 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Mexico and Guatemala, and four additional countries in Africa.

XRP aficionados celebrated the news on Twitter.

BitMEX Listing

In addition to this big partnership, the BitMEX exchange also announced that trading of a new perpetual swap on the XRP token (XRPUSD) will begin on February 5.

This has added to the momentum — despite exchange founder Arthur Hayes labeling it as a ‘dogsh*t.’ [Twitter]

Since the beginning of the year, XRP has gained 40 percent, outperforming Bitcoin and many of the other altcoins. The Ripple token is the top-performing crypto asset in the top 30 at the moment. Its market cap is just shy of $12 billion at the time of writing — but it still has a long way to go to be considered bullish.