Ripple Labs Completes $50 Million Investment in MoneyGram

Ripple Labs has put the final touches on its partnership with MoneyGram, a global payment processor. The deal, which was announced earlier this year, is seen as a significant step forward in the mission to provide easier and faster cross-border transfers. However, while the total monetary value of Ripple’s commitment to MoneyGram was valued at $50 million, Ripple could only pay up a 60 percent down payment at the time.

Ripple now owns Moneygram. Bitcoin fundamentals are stronger than ever, but price is below 2017 – by a lot. Institutional players coming online. Regulators shaping licensing. Bitcoin halving next year. If you think 2017 was the bubble I have big, big news for you.

— Simon (@SimonDingle) November 26, 2019

Expansion and Better On-Demand Settlements 

According to a recent release from MoneyGram, the San Francisco-based company has now ponied up the remaining $20 million, thus effectively completing the investment. 

With the $50 million, Ripple now owns 9.95 percent of MoneyGram’s common stock, purchased at $4.10 a share. According to the terms of the deal signed in June, both companies will work together for the next two years. The partnership will focus on using digital assets to make cross-border payments and foreign exchange settlements. MoneyGram will use Ripple’s xRapid liquidity product to achieve fast and seamless inter-currency settlements. This would be achieved by using the XRP token, which enables xRapid to provide faster transaction settlement than with fiat currencies or any other digital asset. 

On the new investment, Brad Garlinghouse, the chief executive of Ripple Labs, spoke on the success of their partnership so far, as MoneyGram has been able to bring On-Demand liquidity to the Philippines. 

“We’re excited to support MoneyGram’s further expansion into Europe and Australia. Digital assets and blockchain technology have the potential to make a tremendous impact on cross-border payments — MoneyGram and Ripple is an example of that. In June, we announced this partnership, and it’s encouraging to see the rapid growth and benefits come to life,” he explained.  

Ripple’s Remarkable 2019

The purchase should cap off a year where Ripple made some strategic expansions. On August 15, xSpring- another Ripple subsidiary- gave a 1 billion XRP (worth about $250 million at the time) grant to Coil, a platform that helps content creators to monetize their work.

The funds will help Coil to develop an ecosystem of companies, creators, and developers that will use XRP as a base currency to monetize their content. Some of the invested sums will also go to helping to spread the word about Coil across content developers and other members of its intended audience. 

In September, Ripple took a step to increase its adoption among exchanges by acquiring crypto trading firm Algrim. The company is expected to add six engineers to the core Ripple dev team, with a focus on providing seamless XRP integration with partner crypto exchanges. They will also help to bolster Ripple’s cross-border payment corridors and develop the xRapid product.