US-based blockchain technology company Ripple is acquiring a 40 percent stake in the Asian cross-border payments company Tranglo following its push into South-East Asia.
Ripple in its statement said that the deal will help the country to meet growing customer demand in Asia and widen the reach of its On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service. The ODL service enhances cross-border payments and allows the partnering financial service providers to transfer funds economically and instantly across jurisdictions using the XRP coin.
Tranglo, founded in 2008, is based in Malaysia and has offices in Indonesia, the UK, the UAE and Singapore. The company has processed over 20 million transactions totaling $4 billion in value since its inception.
“Tranglo’s robust payments infrastructure coupled with their unparalleled customer service and quality makes them an ideal partner to support our expansion of ODL starting with the South-East Asia region,” said Asheesh Birla, general manager of RippleNet, a network of banks and money services businesses that use solutions developed by Ripple.
Founded in 2012, Ripple’s blockchain technology is currently used by hundreds of financial institutions across more than 55 countries.
“Tranglo has strived to make cross-border transactions faster, cheaper and more secure. By partnering closely with Ripple and introducing ODL to new markets, we aim to further that ambition to provide accessible and equitable financial services to the masses,” Jacky Lee, chief executive of the company, said.
The payments system in the South-East Asia region is highly fragmented. Each country comes with its own unique process and payments infrastructure and the lack of a standard integration for regional cross-border payments currently requires expensive workarounds. Ripple’s investment in Tranglo is expected to solve some of these challenges.
The announcement comes about a week after Brooks Entwistle, a former executive at Goldman Sachs and Uber became Ripple’s managing director of Southeast Asia.
Last year, Ripple and some of its top executives were sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly misleading investors in XRP. They were accused of raising over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.
