We’re learning more about MoneyGram’s interest in expanding its use of Ripple’s XRP-based cross-border payments platform On-Demand Liquidity (ODL).
At Ripple’s recent conference in Singapore, MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes answered questions about the company’s plans to further implement the technology.
According to Holmes, the company is exploring how it can use ODL to directly move money around the world without having to constantly revert back to the US dollar.
“We’re looking now in a lot of the Asian markets. So we’re looking at the Philippines, the interface with Australia, having conversations with Japan, other countries.
One of the most inefficient things about our settlement process in being a US company is that everything is always reverting back to US dollars. It doesn’t make a lot of sense if you need Australian dollars and you need Philippine pesos and you need US dollars. Why can’t you sort of pare those off and just net it through an XRP platform?
And I think, for me, that’s what gets really pretty interesting, is how do you think about not only optimizing the funds flows on a per-transaction basis, but then how do you actually pare that back off in terms of the net settlement as well?
And I think if you can tie those together, and those are the conversations we’ve been having, I think that’s just going to transform and push this forward in a really, really amazing way.”
Holmes says MoneyGram is now moving 10% of its volume to Mexico through ODL.
In addition, he says the company has started using the platform in four new corridors, but so far the company hasn’t released details on those payment routes. A Ripple executive recently suggested that Thailand is one of those new routes.
ODL is designed to use XRP to give companies a regulatory-compliant way to move money across borders.
It works by giving financial institutions the ability to send fiat to crypto exchanges. They then send the equivalent value in XRP to a corresponding exchange in another country where it is then converted back to fiat. The process is designed to complete transactions in minutes, with the assets exposed to XRP for only a matter of seconds.