• GME Remittance is the most recent remittance company in the APAC region to join RippleNet.
• Through this partnership the company seeks to scale and expedite payments to Thailand.
• The firm’s Director and COO said RippleNet helped minimize the time used to market its service.
• Prior to this, Ripple said it had recorded a 130% increase in year-over-year transactions in the APAC region.

The digital remittance industry is rapidly growing, especially in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. In 2018, the market was worth $49.85 billion, and analysts estimate it will grow to $269.78 billion by 2026. Taking advantage of the massive potential in this market is Ripple, which has been leveraging its global financial network, RippleNet, to streamline remittances in the region. The network’s efficiency has attracted leading payment companies due to its ability to facilitate real-time global payments at low costs.

The latest company to join RippleNet is Global Money Express, a South Korea-based non-bank remittance service provider. Ripple disclosed this news on August 10, noting that joining RippleNet enabled the company to establish a connection with Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), Thailand’s fifth-largest bank by capitalization. Through this link, Global Money Express, commonly known as GME Remittance, will be able to expedite and scale payments from South Korea to Thailand. 

Explaining what drove GME Remittance to join hands with Ripple, the company’s Director and COO, Subash Chandra Poudel, said,

“We chose Ripple as our partner because with RippleNet we can launch into new countries with new partners within 1-2 weeks. This has drastically reduced the time to market and provides us with an edge compared to our competitors.”

Ripple’s Adoption in Asia Continues to Surge

Touting RippleNet, Poudel said GME Remittance has benefited from the robustness of the network since joining it. According to him, RippleNet enables the monitoring of transactions at each stage, thus making it easy to complete cross-border transactions at high speed and transparency. 

Commenting on this partnership, Emi Yoshikawa, Ripple’s Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Operations, said working with GME Remittance makes it easy to deliver a superior customer experience. He added that the remittance company would get to enjoy accelerated expansion into new markets by connecting with the existing established partners on RippleNet. 

This news comes after Ripple announced that it was thriving in the APAC region, with transactions increasing by 130% year-over-year. According to Ripple, this massive growth is driven by the existing RippleNet customers and new connections.

On The Flipside

• Despite Ripple’s success in Asia, the project continues to face legal battles in the US.
• The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) took Ripple and two of its executives to court in December last year, forcing the price of XRP to plunge significantly.
• While the coin’s price has managed to rise once again, XRP fell out of the top-three leading cryptos by capitalization.