Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says he believes the company’s partnership with MoneyGram will have a bigger impact on the crypto industry than Facebook’s Libra.
In a new interview with Yahoo Finance, Garlinghouse says banks that Ripple approached two years ago are now interested in the company’s XRP-based cross-border payment solution xRapid.
“The Moneygram deal is really one of the first scaled use cases of a digital asset in production. This is a big deal. If I were betting now, a year from now the Moneygram deal will have a more consequential impact on the crypto markets than the Libra white paper…
Banks that two years ago told me: Hey we love your technology, we’re thrilled to be working with you but we’re not going to use crypto. I said OK great. Some of those same banks are now coming back and saying, hey let’s talk about that because they see the value.”
According to Garlinghouse, Ripple will sign around 100 new contracts this year, with around 20% involving xRapid and XRP.
Ripple purchased $30 million worth of shares in leading money transfer service MoneyGram in June. As part of the business agreement, Ripple can invest an additional $20 million in the coming years. Along with the deal, MoneyGram revealed that it will use xRapid to power international transactions.
Ripple’s global head of banking Marjan Delatinne says the payments technology firm has been onboarding around 20 financial institutions who will be using xRapid to make remittance payments.
Garlinghouse says Ripple’s management is currently in talks with several parties regarding potential investments and acquisitions. But so far, he has not provided further details about any of the company’s prospects, saying “deals are always very, very hard to predict.”
When questioned about which specific areas Ripple is targeting, Garlinghouse says,
“Anything we can do to accelerate our growth and give us more capabilities that serve customer needs is a good place to be.”
Established in 2012, Ripple is one of the largest cryptocurrency firms. Its management has raised $94 million from several prominent investors including venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc., Banco Santander and Standard Chartered.
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