MoneyGram is one of the most popular money transfer companies in the world, but just like its competitors, it suffered from the burden of antiquated technology burdening its bottom line. In a bid to speed up transactions and save customers more money, MoneyGram has teamed up with Ripple to deploy its xRapid technology. In an earnings report, Alex Holmes – MoneyGram CEO – revealed that it had deployed xRapid late last week and that it was settling payments in seconds.
MoneyGram is Overtaking Western Union
Western Union is one of MoneyGram’s closest competitors and it has been testing out xRapid for nearly 4 years now. According to Hikmet Ersek – Western Union CEO – xRapid isn’t really that profitable for the company. Days later, Ripple hit back saying that Western Union was only pushing a fraction of transactions through the platform rather than using it to its full potential. In the past week, MoneyGram has overtaken Western Union with xRapid adoption and is already reaping the benefits of superior technology.
Banks are Joining the xRapid Ecosystem
It’s not just money transfer companies that are leaping onto the xRapid train. Earlier this year, Euro Exim Bank successfully integrated the xRapid platform and it has been dying for other banks to join the network so that it can start using it to its full potential. Then in March, Mercury FX made the first xRapid transfer to a bank in the Philippines, becoming the first company to ever use the platform to transfer funds between two different companies.
While more banks and firms are signing up to xRapid, Euro Exim Bank is hard at work exploring other ways to use the technology and create xRapid powered financial derivatives. So far, Euro Exim Bank is still in the research phase, but it’s likely not long before it announces a product that’s ready to go live.
Looking to the Future
In the earnings report, Holmes praised Ripple and its xRapid technology as it allows MoneyGram to further improve the strength of its business and money transfer services. Holes said:
Our partnership with Ripple will help further improve this core strength. Our internal innovation lab continues to explore new and exciting use cases for crypto, DLT and blockchain as we look to build the model of the future.
As MoneyGram enters the history books, the xRapid network is beginning to grow. Soon, xRapid will be an ecosystem with a huge number of companies already operating on it, meaning real-time use of the platform could be a lot closer than we thought back in 2018.
