- Western Union assessment of XRP officially underway
- No formal partnership yet
International payments giant Western Union has confirmed that it is testing money transfers using technology from cryptocurrency platform Ripple.
The company’s Chief Finance Officer Raj Agrawal told Bloomberg News this week that the use of Ripple’s XRP cryptocurrency was still in a “testing phase” and at this stage there was nothing to indicate a “big unlock” imminently.
Speculation gathered considerable momentum in January that a possible partnership between Ripple and Western Union may be in the offing. Ripple maintains the blockchain for XRP, a currency that attracted global attention among currency watchers at the start of the year when its value soared to USD $3 per token, shortly before nosediving. Since then, prices for the currency have crept back over the $1 mark during Asian trade.
In the immediate wake of Agrawal’s announcement, XRP tokens showed little change in value. To date, Ripple has forged an impressive network of global banks that are all engaged in trialling its platform. Its most recent deal was inked last week with foreign exchange colossus UAE Exchange to help enable cross-border payments. That arrangement is with the Ripple company itself (UAE Exchange is not yet willing to use XRP tokens directly).
Last month, Ripple announced that it had secured two more money transfers firms to its client roster.
But this week’s announcement by Mr Agrawal marks the first official confirmation that Western Union, by far the world’s best-known money transfers firm, is indeed experimenting with Ripple’s technology. The development does not exactly represent a formal partnership, but evidence of joint engagement.
The news broke at virtually the same time that Western Union reported its full-year earnings from 2017, which marked a not-to-be-scoffed-at increase in revenue of 5%, taking the total to $1.4bn.
Shares in Western Union closed at $19.75 on the day of Agrawal’s announcement (14 February 2018), representing a dip of 0.10%.