Japan’s SBI Remit will connect with Coins.ph and crypto exchange SBI VC Trade to open the remittance corridor, leveraging Ripple’s on-demand liquidity service.
Ripple has announced the launch of a new cross-border corridor for remittances between Japan and the Philippines.
The move represents the first live use of Ripple’s on-demand liquidity (ODL) service in Japan. The service uses Ripple’s ‘xRapid’ cross-border payment service and allows customers to transfer funds using XRP, making transactions relatively faster and cheaper.
Under the arrangement, Japan’s largest money transfer provider SBI Remit will connect with Philippine mobile wallet services company Coins.ph and digital asset exchange platform SBI VC Trade to open up a remittance corridor between the two countries.
“By leveraging the digital asset XRP to eliminate pre-funding, the two companies can also free up capital and accelerate the expansion of their own payments businesses,” Ripple said in a blog post.
Approximately USD 1.8 billion in remittances flow from Japan to the Philippines every year, and Japan has one of the highest remittance costs in the world, which can make remittance an “especially painful transaction”, Ripple said.
The company says the launch of ODL in Japan is just the start, and that it is looking to push into the “next frontier of financial innovation, beyond real-time payments in just the Philippines, but to other parts of the region as well”.
The statement comes as Ripple and the US SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) engage in a court battle regarding whether Ripple and its key executives used XRP in unregistered securities offerings.
Ripple is arguing that certain members of the SEC have expressed a lack of clarity around securities regulations, and that it did not have fair notice that its dealings in XRP could have been construed as illegal.