Ripple announced its partnership with International Money Express (Intermex) on Feb 4, 2020. According to Ripple’s announcement, Intermex processes more than 30 million transactions annually and is thus among the largest US to Mexico cross-border payments provider.
Through the partnership, Intermex would utilize RippleNet to bolster near-instant and transparent international payments for its customers. In a recent earnings call, Tony Lauro, the Chief Financial Officer at Intermex noted that the company will begin testing out Ripple’s XRP for its remittance services later this year.
Intermex To Start Testing XRP’s Potential As A Bridge Currency In 2020
Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) which uses the XRP cryptocurrency as a bridge currency to enable real-time and low-cost international payments has been adopted by a number of high-profile companies like MoneyGram.
In fact, MoneyGram revealed late last year that it processes 10% of its US-Mexico transactions via the ODL. Moreover, since adopting Ripple’s ODL in the second quarter of 2019, MoneyGram has witnessed significant growth in its revenue.
As mentioned above, Ripple’s partnership with International Money Express (Intermex) entailed the latter utilizing RippleNet for its remittance services. The CFO Tony Lauro opined that the company is looking into other Ripple products like the On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service which they will begin testing later this year:
“The other would be on-demand liquidity, I think that might be more of what you’re talking about, where we can use XRP as kind of a pivot currency to swap US dollars for pesos, 24/7. And it’s early days, but we would expect to be testing that later this year.“
He added:
“And to the extent that it is viable, either from a rate perspective or a capital efficiency perspective, we’ll expand it. But it’s too early to say how much we intend to do.”
No, Intermex Will Not Be Using Ripple’s Technology In Its ‘Core Markets’
Notably, Intermex mainly focuses on Latin America and the Caribbean. And although the company intends to start testing Ripple’s ODL, the CEO Robert Lisy clarified that they do not intend to use any of Ripple’s payment solutions in their core markets.
Lisy specifically posited that “Ripple will not be an answer for places like Mexico” because they are “very proud about the relationships we have there”. He further explained:
“We have very tight relationships that [are] strategically setting plans and objectives with those payers. And so you won’t really see us leveraging Ripple in our core markets.”
In other words, Intermex will not utilize Ripple’s technology in its core markets where it has already established strong relationships. Instead, it will leverage Ripple in newer markets in areas where they are looking into “ancillary products”
