Ripple Announces First On-Demand Liquidity Offering in Japan

Today, Ripple announces its first live On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) offering in Japan. Through this, Ripple Network’s plan of expansion across the Asia Pacific region will be strengthened.

According to Ripple’s official announcement, the largest money transfer provided in Japan, SBI Remit, has teamed up with a mobile payments service called Coins.ph. They also team up with the digital asset exchange platform called SBI VC Trade to transform remittance from Japan to the Philippines.

On the same announcement, they cited that the Filipino diaspora is one of the ten largest in the world based on United Nations’ data. Noting that these known Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) that consist of over five million, are working abroad so they can send money to family members. Thus, this ODL will help them avoid the traditional system of international payments which are often slow and expensive.

Hopefully, Ripple’s first ODL service implementation will drive more adoption of crypto-enabled services in the country. With that said, SBI Remit Director Nobuo Ando said,

We see tremendous potential in leveraging blockchain technology to transform not only the way payment transactions are made but in how we manage our business by unlocking trapped capital. The launch of ODL in Japan is just the start, and we look forward to continuing 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.

Looking at the bigger picture, this deal seems to be part of Ripple’s explosive growth in the APAC region. Especially now that cryptocurrency is getting the public’s interest with all the changes in regulations in several countries.

Lastly, Ripple revealed that the Asia Pacific is one of the fastest-growing regions for them with transactions increasing up to 130% year-over-year. Hence, the company recently hired a fintech veteran Brooks Entwistle as Managing Director for Southeast Asia.