Ripple lands another major US-Mexico remittance provider

By Frank Cardona

Ripple continues its push into the cross-border payments market. Yesterday, the firm behind the XRP Ledger announced a partnership with International Money Express, a leading remittance services firm in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Intermex, listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange as IMXI, is one of the largest remitter service providers in the world. It services 100,000 payer locations across 17 countries, and which processes more than 30 million transactions per year, according to the company’s own figures. 

The partnership is especially focused on the Mexico-US corridor. Mexico received $36 billion dollars in remittance payments last year, the third highest in the world, according to the World Bank. 

After a successful funding round in 2019 for Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product, Intermex hopes to leverage the Ripple network to instantly send transactions for a fraction of the typical cost. According to the World Bank, the average global remittance transaction costs 6.82% of the amount sent, much higher than its target for below 3% by 2030. 

“We are pleased to have begun the partnership with the Ripple team, and look forward to implementing new solutions on RippleNet and ODL to help drive growth and deliver greater efficiency,” said Intermex’s CEO Bob Lisy in a statement.

Last year, Ripple partnered with another leading international remittance service, MoneyGram, a deal which also focused on the Mexico-US remittance corridor. Ripple’s other partnerships include firms like goLance, Viamericas, and FlashFX. Its ODL product is being used in additional prominent corridors with the United States, such as the Philippines, Australia, and Europe.

Ripple’s cryptocurrency, XRP, is the third largest by market cap. Over the last month, the price of XRP has surged over 24 percent. While it is still nowhere near its all-time high of $3.84 per coin, Ripple’s continued expansion across the globe with prominent cross-border payment providers is a positive sign for XRP holders.

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