u.today
Distributed ledger tech provider Ripple has announced the launch of a new On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) payment corridor between Japan and the Philippines.
SBI Remit, the remittance division of Japanese finance group SBI, picked Philippine crypto exchange Coins.ph as its partner.
The ODL product (formerly known as “xRapid”) uses XRP a bridge currency to remove the need for pre-funding by tapping into the cryptocurrency’s liquidity. Thus, it is expected to make remittances more affordable, which is a pressing problem in Japan.
SBI VC Trade, the financial giant’s cryptocurrency trading subsidiary, will provide the necessary infrastructure to respond to remittance requests sent by SBI Remit.
SBI says that it will continue to expand its partnership with Ripple. Nobuo Ando of SBI Remit says that the launch of the corridor is “just the start”:
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.
Japan—which is in the middle of hosting the Tokyo 2020 Olympics—has always been a major mainstay for Ripple.
The country emerged as the top candidate for Ripple’s global headquarters in late 2020, but the company put its plan to move out of San Francisco on pause amid its legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.