IDT, a telecommunications company, along with international payments service group Mercury, have announced that they would begin using Ripple‘s xRapid product for money transfers.
xRapid is an XRP-powered product that seeks to enhance cross-border payments for emerging markets. xRapid uniquely uses XRP to offer on-demand liquidity, which dramatically lowers costs while enabling real-time payments in emerging markets. xRapid is for payment providers and other financial institutions who want to minimize liquidity costs while improving their customer experience.
The media caught wind of this product earlier this month when Moneygram, one of the largest money transfer companies in the world, announced that they would begin testing it.
Following the news of Moneygram’s decision to start testing xRapid, IDT and Mercury became the latest to sign onto the product. But they haven’t been the only ones to use Ripple’s digital assets. Last October, Ripple announced that Cuallix, a Mexican financial service firm was using XRP. It appears that all of these companies have the common goal of continuously improving customer experience.
It has been indicated that the aim is to improve the speed of payments to a point at which they are occurring in real time. In addition, the companies are looking to use this technology as a way to drop the overall cost of financial transactions.
“Payment providers like IDT Corporation and MercuryFX are early movers because they understand what XRP can do for their business and customer experience,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said of the announcement. “We’re excited to have them at the forefront of the Internet of Value.”
Alfredo O’Hagan, SVP of IDT’s consumer payments business, said in a statement:
“We’re excited to pilot Ripple’s xRapid solution for on-demand liquidity. We expect that xRapid will enable us to settle more transactions in real-time and at a lower cost.”
Ripple stands out in the cryptocurrency world as a company that seeks to partner with, rather than topple, the existing financial system. This in itself has lead to great success and has drawn many investors to XRP. Ripple is constantly surging and has already surpassed Bitcoin in it’s meteoric increase in value.