Ripple has completed its first On-Demand Liquidity implementation in Japan, opening an XRP to fiat remittance corridor for the Filipino diaspora.
Approximately $1.8 billion in remittances flow every year from Japan to the Philippines, with money transfer costs coming in at almost twice as much as the average of all the G8 countries.
The new remittance corridor will link Japanese money transfer provider SBI Remit with Philippines mobile payments service Coins.ph and crypto exchange SBI VC Trade in cross border trades that will flip fiat transactions into XRP and back again.
“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,” says Nobuo Ando, representative director of SBI Remit. “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.”
Asia Pacific is now one of the fastest growing regions for Ripple with transactions growing 130% year-over-year.
The latest news comes on the heels of similar partnerships with companies like Novatti and Tranglo, as well as Ripple’s recent hiring of finance and technology veteran Brooks Entwistle as managing director of Southeast Asia.