Multinational payment processing platform MoneyGram has announced a new product for its customers. Called FastSend, the product will allow MoneyGram customers to make real-time cross-border payments. Surprisingly, FastSend will not be done via Ripple’s platform, XRP, or via blockchain technology at all.
Last year, blockchain company Ripple made a $50 million investment in MoneyGram. The investment means that the blockchain giant owns nearly 10% of Money Gram’s common stock.
In addition to that, the partnership was touted as a mutually beneficial one for both parties, as it would ensure that MoneyGram uses Ripple’s services for its cross-border transactions. However, reports suggest that this is not the case.
MoneyGram Chief Operating Officer Kamily Chytil said that FastSend will be using Visa’s technology, and not Ripple’s. Running on Visa’s Direct Original Credit Transaction system, FastSend will still run side by side with other MoneyGram products that use Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL).
MoneyGram might have bigger plans for Ripple than just the cross-border remittance market. Chytil added that the company is looking into using blockchain for other functions such as data security and privacy. With its partnership with Ripple, MoneyGram’s other interests in distributed ledger technologies (DLT) could still be handled by the blockchain company.
In December last year, MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes revealed that since the partnership between both parties was formed, MoneyGram had successfully processed more than $100 million via ODL. Holmes also confirmed that a tenth of all cross-border payments handled between the Mexican Peso and the US Dollar was handled using ODL as well.
It might not be all that strange that MoneyGram has launched a new product without Ripple’s ODL. While it is still expected that MoneyGram will do more with ODL, it is unlikely that pretty much every product launched will be done via the blockchain.
MoneyGram’s next announcement might very well include Ripple’s services.
