Ripple, the leading provider of enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions for cross-border payments, today announced a partnership with Global Money Express Co. Ltd (GME Remittance), one of the largest non-bank remittance service providers in South Korea, through SBI Ripple Asia, a joint venture between SBI Holdings and Ripple.
Through Ripple’s global financial network technology RippleNet, GME Remittance has connected to Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), Thailand’s largest bank in terms of market capital, to accelerate and scale payments from South Korea into Thailand. At 184,000 people, the number of Thai nationals residing in South Korea is the third largest — after Chinese and Vietnamese nationals.
GME Remittance joins an existing roster of Korean financial institutions and money transfer companies already on RippleNet — including CROSS ENF and Sentbe — that currently serve the remittance corridor between South Korea and Thailand. The number of transactions sent via RippleNet for this corridor has doubled year-over-year.
Through this partnership, GME Remittance is looking to connect with existing RippleNet customers to expand into additional remittance corridors across the region and globally, including Europe and the US.
This new connection on RippleNet between GME Remittance and SCB comes off the back of strong customer momentum for Ripple in Asia Pacific. The region is one of the fastest growing for Ripple, with transactions growing 130% year-over-year, driven by existing RippleNet customers and new connections.
“We chose Ripple as our partner because with RippleNet we can launch into new countries with new partners within 1-2 weeks. This has drastically reduced the time to market and provides us with an edge compared to our competitors. Since launching our partnership, our team has benefited from the robustness of RippleNet, where transactions are tracked at every step of the process, making it easy to send money across borders with speed and transparency,” said Subash Chandra Poudel, Director and COO at Global Money Express Co. Ltd. (GME Remittance).
“The remittance corridors requiring high-performance payments to this region are growing exponentially — with people needing to send money round the clock, even on holidays or weekends,” said Emi Yoshikawa, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Operations at Ripple. ”We’re pleased to partner with a leading payments service provider like GME Remittance to deliver a superior customer experience, while accelerating their expansion into new markets as they connect with our existing network of established partners on RippleNet.”
RippleNet leverages blockchain technology to help partners across a global network accelerate their business performance and scale. It delivers a superior end-customer experience, simplified network partnering, liquidity management solutions, lines of credit, and a state-of-the-art infrastructure to enable real-time payments.