XRP jumped in price this week after Ripple announced it is expanding its cross-border payment product, On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), to Japan.
SBI Remit Co., the largest money transfer provider in Japan, partnered with mobile payments service Coins.ph and digital asset exchange platform SBI VC Trade in order to use ODL to power remittances from Japan to the Philippines, according to a new announcement from Ripple.
The effort represents XRP’s first ODL service implementation in Japan.
Nobuo Ando, representative director of SBI Remit, says that the first ODL launch “is just the start” of the company’s financial innovations.
“We see tremendous potential in leveraging blockchain technology to transform not only the way payment transactions are made but in how we manage our business by unlocking trapped capital. The launch of ODL in Japan is just the start, and we look forward to continuing to push into the next frontier of financial innovation, beyond real-time payments in just the Philippines, but to other parts of the region as well.”
According to Ripple, a total of $1.8 billion in remittances moves from Japan to the Philippines annually, and Japan has one of the highest remittance costs in the world at 10.5%, which is almost twice as much as the 5.92% average across all the G8 countries.
ODL transactions accounted for $2.4 billion in notional value in 2020, according to RippleNet general manager Asheesh Birla.
A few hours after the announcement, XRP went from trading around $0.6348 to a high of about $0.74566 – a more than 17% increase. The asset is trading at $0.715701 at time of writing, according to CoinGecko.
Don't Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inboxFeatured Image: Shutterstock/Naeblys