The collective expansion of Ripple and Moneygram has been a steady development since the beginning of 2019. Moneygram International, a global leader in cross-border remittances, has also been vocal about its key partnership with Ripple and extended the partnership with another $11.3 million deal in February 2020.
Now, according to a recent press release, the organization has entered into a strategic partnership with Al Rajhi Bank, one of the largest banks in the MENA Islamic zone, and Tahweel Al Rajhi, Al Rajhi Bank’s remittance division. The specific target region to facilitate transaction services will be Saudi Arabia.
The press release further indicated that the partnership will be taking control of both the digital and walk-in channels in order to enable strong customer engagement.
Grant Lines, MoneyGram Chief Revenue Officer stated,
“This partnership is an important milestone that capitalizes on recent strategic investments in major receive markets. Over the last few months, we’ve expanded with new partners in India, Egypt, Pakistan, and the Philippines to name a few. All of these markets are key recipients of transfers from Saudi Arabia, and consumers will now benefit from this customer-centric integration with Al Rajhi Bank.”
The aforementioned between Moneygram and Al Rajhi Bank will be highly fundamental in the future but it is not the first time the organization has taken steps in the MENA region.
Expansion in the Middle East and Asia
In January 2020, Moneygram had struck down a deal with the Suez Canal Bank, which is one of the largest commercial banks in Egypt that provides its customers with the functionality to send capital to local bank accounts.
The diversification has been taking place further East as well with the two organizations taking further steps to occupy the South Korean remittance market by joining forces with local fintech players.
XRP’s Social Volume Engagement
Although the price hasn’t been on the move recently, Ripples’ development might have come to XRP’s aide to bolster its relevance in the space. According to Santiment’s recent insights, it was suggested that XRP had taken the top spot in ‘Emerging Trends’ and had witnessed massive social volume spike.
It is evident that Ripple promotes the use of XRP token for its remittance services and it is plausible Moneygram has integrated XRP as well in their global services. These developments may continue to put forward the use-case of the digital asset and further break reduce its correlation from Bitcoin.