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Mercury FX says its commercial use of Ripple’s XRP-based xRapid is dramatically boosting the speed and lowering the cost of its cross-border transactions.

Appearing at Ripple Regionals 2019 in London, Mercury FX CEO Alastair Constance says xRapid is proving to be a better option than the leading network for global payments: Swift.

Mercury FX, a global currency exchange provider with offices in London, Hong Kong and Cape Town, is now planning to open up a new payment corridor to the Philippines.

“We did our first live commercial payments a couple of weeks ago. So we are now making payments for a UK corporate to Mexico to import Mexican food. And they are moving a lot faster than payments would go through Swift, at a much lower cost.

So we’ve already had the Mexican channel open up. It is live. It is being used. And I think today or tomorrow we’re testing the Philippines with an eye to going live in the next week or so.”

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Last month, Mercury FX revealed the details of its largest xRapid commercial payment to date. The company says it used xRapid to send a payment of $4,574 from the UK to Mexico. The payment executed in a matter of seconds, compared to the 31 hours it would normally take on traditional payment rails. The lower fees saved the company a total of $102.

1/1 We've made our largest payments across RippleNet using #XRP – 86,633.00 pesos (£3,521.67) from the U.K. to Mexico in seconds. pic.twitter.com/WsHJuZTiOy — Mercury-fx Ltd (@mercury_fx_ltd) January 17, 2019

Meanwhile, Swift is working to improve the speed, reliability and cost of its payments, and is currently testing a new payment system designed to counter Ripple and other emerging cross-border payment startups.

In an effort to reduce errors and delays, Swift’s new system will allow banks and financial institutions to share data and pre-approve transactions.