Ripple has been putting in lots of work to win over as many customers as possible across the financial sector. Many of these new customers joining RippleNet have been banks and other financial institutions like Western Union and MoneyGram.
Just a few days ago, MoneyGram inked a $50 million deal with Ripple and has expressed willingness to use XRP for cross-border payments. On its part, Western Union has been friendly to Ripple’s payment solutions for years.
Since 2015, Western Union has been testing Ripple’s payment solutions. Now, the company’s CEO, Hikmet Ersek, has stated that Western Union will be conducting more tests on the payment solutions before fully adopting them. The CEO intimated these details during a discussion hosted by Fortune.
Different To MoneyGram
To further explain the company’s position, Hikmet said that Western Union doesn’t have similar goals to MoneyGram that has just confirmed its adoption of Ripple’s technology. As such, Western Union needs more time to fully test the solutions. However, the CEO was quick to note that the global company has indeed learned a lot from Ripple over the years.
Speaking in December 2018, Western Union’s president of global money transfer, Odilon Almeida, said that Western Union is ready to include cryptos among its payment options, further noting that the company already facilitates transfers in over 130 currencies, Odilon went on to say that the company will be ready to switch to cryptos if and when it deems it necessary. That raises the prospects of Western Union soon using XRP for cross-border transactions, and that’s something bound to greatly affect the crypto’s adoption positively.
Facebook’s Libra Will Face A Hard Task
Talking about the recent release of the White Paper for Facebook’s crypto, Libra, Western Union’s CEO said that Libra may find it hard to go mainstream, especially because it would need a lot of effort in reaching people and facilitating cash-outs in local fiat. He argued that that kind of streamlined payment structure took Western Union many years to establish.
