Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange behemoth, looks to be entering the cross-border payments arena. This comes as part of a fresh official announcement from Coinbase.



Coinbase customers will be able to exchange funds internationally



Specifically, on March 28th Coinbase announced that users would now be able to send money globally to ”any user with a Coinbase account”. Furthermore, Coinbase stated that their system would either utilize XRP or USDC.



Coinbase’s official announcement went on to note that this was made possible by cryptocurrencies which are intended for international transfers:



”By using cryptocurrencies that are optimized for cross-border transmission, you can send and receive money virtually instantly by sending those cryptocurrencies and having the recipient convert them into local currency.”



As a result of this, Coinbase customers will now be able to exchange funds around the world basically instantly, without any fee when using Coinbase. Moreover, customers will then likely be able to convert the funds into a local currency of their choosing – depending on the support in their region.



Furthermore, Coinbase has chosen to partly rely on its stablecoin, the USDCoin, for these international transfers. The USDCoin is pegged 1-to-1 to the US dollar, and was launched last fall.



These transfers are significantly cheaper and faster than bank transfers



Coinbase also highlights the speed with which these transfers will take place. The company says that a comparable bank transfer would take one to two business days, whilst an on-chain Ripple transfer would take place in three to five seconds, and an n-chain USDC transfer would take 12 – 17 seconds.



Although no fees will be levied on transactions between Coinbase users, an on-chain network fee will nonetheless be applied when transferring outside of Coinbase. Even so, the fee for on-chain transactions is said to be less than $0.01 for XRP, and less than $1.00 for USDC.



Moreover, this comes amid significant cross-border transaction-related news for Ripple. Not long ago, Federal Bank – a private lending bank in India – announced a partnership with Ripple, in which it would use Ripple’s network for cross-border payments.



Furthermore, Federal Bank also launched two remittance platforms for making transfers to India in the United Arab Emirates on March 28th.



For Coinbase on the other hand, March was similarly a busy month. The exchange launched a fresh service linking user accounts from its platform to the Coinbase Wallet application. In addition to this, the exchange also launched an update to the market structure on Coinbase Pro to ”increase liquidity”.



