Ripple partners up with Intermex to speed up remittance transactions to Latin America

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Updated on Mar 11, 2020

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Ripple recently announced a collaboration with Intermex, a major remittance services firm that operates in Latin America.
Thanks to the collaboration, the citizens of Latin America, specifically Mexico, will be able to enjoy near-instant, cheap payments at any time.
With this move, remittance battle in Latin America continues to heat up, with Ripple and PayPal being among the largest contenders.

The crypto startup Ripple, the creator of the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency, XRP, is continuing with its ambition to secure low-cost transactions throughout the world. According to the company’s recent moves, it seems that Ripple is targeting Latin American countries next.

To achieve this, the firm has announced a new partnership with a major remittance services company known as International Money Express (Intermex). Intermex is a company that focuses on payments across the Caribbean and Latin American corridors, meaning that Ripple’s partnership with it is likely to allow the company greater access to these parts.

Meanwhile, Intermex itself will benefit thanks to its new ability to use Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) and speed up payments between the US and Mexico.

The recent report further states that RippleNet will also be directly involved in the processing of around 30 million payments during this year. This will be possible due to a system that consists of a massive network, featuring more than 100,000 payer locations.

Ripple and PayPal conquering Latin America

As many likely know Ripple aims to be the dominant remittance service and considering that Mexico is considered the third-highest country when it comes to remittance recipients, it was only a matter of time before Ripple made a move to enter this market. It was estimated that recipients in Mexico collected over $36 billion in remittance payments in 2019.

Ripple and Intermex will allow these payments to be much faster and much cheaper, all the while providing transparency to their users.

Of course, Ripple is not the only one interested in entering the Latin American market. PayPal itself made a move to do so in 2019 when it invested $750 million into a company MercadoLibre last March. Even as the year came to a close, PayPal announced that it signed a commercial agreement with the company to offer innovative financial solutions and help the unbanked and underbanked.