It seems Ripple is pretty serious about pushing XRP adoption in a massive way. The San Francisco based fintech firm announced a $200 million funding on Thursday for the same.
Ripple intends to redefine cross-border payments by onboarding banks, financial institutions, and third-party payment operators. XRP, the company’s native cryptocurrency is going to prove instrumental in this regard. At least this is the idea which global investment firm Tetragon bought while helping Ripple raise the $200 million figure in a Series C funding round.
XRP at the Center of the Million Dollar Deal
Owing to 2017’s parabolic rally, XRP ballooned in price and propelled itself to 3rd place on cryptocurrency rankings. Although Ripple’s crypto token has lost a great deal of its value over the last two years, XRP still marks an important focal point in the company’s business.
This is why, apart from other proprietary offerings, Ripple has promoted XRP in a big way projecting the token’s image as the de-facto ‘bridge currency’ for global money transfers. As per CEO Brad Garlinghouse in an interview with Fortune:
XRP helps customers free up capital that they would otherwise have to park as reserves in local banks.
Ripple recently bought a certain stake in Moneygram, which boss Garlinghouse claims uses XRP for ‘15% of its transfers into Mexico’. He also mentioned that a number of Ripple clients use the digital asset significantly for transfers of Australian dollars, Philippine pesos, and—to a lesser degree—Brazilian real.
Garlinghouse didn’t comment on anything regarding Ripple’s revenues or profits earned to date. However, he did maintain the stance that expedited adoption of XRP is the company’s core focus. Sure, the company makes money through the sale of its money transfer software, but it seems heavily invested in the idea of boosting XRP usage, since that, in turn, would improve the token’s pricing, and would allow Ripple to ‘profit from selling its reserves’.
Ripple Mentioned in US Bill Proposal
As reported by Bitcoinist, both Ripple and XRP were mentioned as seminal developments in global payments in a proposed US bill on remittance insurances. The pending action, a document on Remittance Transfers Under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (Regulation E), is still in discussion until January 2021.
Ripple’s payment network was seen as the next frontier for the remittance market was mentioned also in relation to being a system which could exactly predict the funds to be received.
Despite rampant layoffs in the crypto industry, Ripple appears unfazed and seems to be riding the ‘aggressive expansion’ ride. This is pretty evident from the latest statistics, which shows that the company expanded its staff to 534 people in offices around the world.
CEO Garlinghouse talking about the funding round said that Ripple does not ‘actually require the money’. Although, it will provide good “balance sheet flexibility.”
What do you think about Ripple’s latest $200 million raise? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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