Ripple has announced two new partnerships that they are starting out this new year with. The two companies, IDT Corporation and Mercury FX, are considered to be major financial services. Ripple joined forces with the duo in hopes that it will cement itself as the cryptocurrency exchange for the two establishments.
IDT Corporation and Mercury FX are major corporations specializing in money transferring. They also join the growing list of mainstream payment services that has incorporated Ripple’s XRP cryptocurrency. The digital money will be used to transfer money globally.
Ripple won over the two major payment providers with their xRapid service. xRapid is a money transfer service that allows digital currency to be transferred virtually anywhere, very cheaply and extremely quickly.
Money transactions that have traditionally taken banks multiple business days to successfully transfer over are now acted upon as soon as the request is made with this new service that Ripple has been promoting.
Brad Garlinghouse, CEO over at Ripple, expanded on this thought. He said that XRP is extremely faster and gets the job done better than the popular cryptocurrency bitcoin. XRP settles in an average time of 3 seconds and at a sliver of the price of a regular penny. He then went on to mention the recent partnership between IDT Corporation and Mercury FX, saying that although they are early to the game, they understand all of the benefits of XRP and how much it will help their companies and keep their customers satisfied. Garlinghouse ended his public statement by admitting how excited Ripple is to work with their new partners.
Alastair Constance, the boss of Mercury FX, cemented their partnership by saying they “fit hand in glove”. He went on to explain their decision, telling the public that international settlement is the best outcome for seamless transactions. By using xRapid, Mercury FX is able to slash the price of crypto transactions, making FX customers above all other competition, all while saving them millions every year.
Alfredo O’Hagan, senior vice president of IDT’s consumer payments business, also commented on the situation. He echoed Constance, saying that they were excited to employ xRapid for “on-demand liquidity”. And by doing so, the cost and time of transactions were guaranteed to lower.
Ripple’s XRP received a sizable bonus early on into this month when it was announced that MoneyGram was becoming a partner to Ripple. MoneyGram was just one of many transfer giants interested in aligning with Ripple, as Santander bank and American Express followed soon after to make deals.
While this has been making Ripple considerable amounts of money, it has also drawn considerable ire from the public. People don’t like that Ripple is cozying up to so many big corporations with the idea of cryptocurrency.
Erik Voorhees, CEO of ShapeShift, talked about this idea. He asked the question of why a cryptocurrency company was partnering with big banks, when the main thought behind cryptocurrency is to cut the banks out of the equation.
Despite the criticism, Ripple has been on a steep rise during this past year. They have increased more than 35,000% of their price since the beginning of this last year.
But as always with currency, especially crypto, the prices have been a rollercoaster. Ripple peaked on January 4th, around the price of $3.84 before going back under the $1 range. This cost them around $100 billion.
