Western Union Testing and Considering the Use of Ripple’s XRP for International Payments

Western Union, the international money transfer giant, is not relaxing in its quest to test the potential in Ripple’s digital token XRP.

Going by a 2020 research report from Credit Suisse, the international money transfer giant is considering the strength of the technology in boosting the speed, in order to reduce the cost of cross-border payments.

According to the researchers, “Western Union is testing and considering use of Ripple (XRP) for cross-border…” The researchers also referred to the partnership between Ripple and MoneyGram as a case study, “…Ripple has made a $50mm investment in Western Union competitor, MoneyGram.”

In the research report, it’s stated that Western Union still keeps considering Ripple’s XRP, despite the fact that the company is initially less bullish on the technology.

Moves of Western Union towards Crypto Assets and XRP in the Past

In June 2019, the CEO of Western Union said that the company’s initial trials of Ripple’s XRP in cross-border transactions, revealed that using cryptocurrency is 5 times more expensive than using their in-house payment system.

However, in February 2019, Molly Shea, Western Union’s general manager of Asia Pacific, had said the company is in strategic moves to use cryptocurrencies, since it’s getting clearer that they are taking over the international payment.

Molly Shea said,

“When you think about cryptocurrencies, if those start to take off, we need to be ready. We need to be ready from a technology perspective.

And we’ve got to be ready from – regulatory has to be there – but we constantly have to be looking for those trends where customers are looking and make sure that you’re ready to meet those needs and expectations.”

The report released by Credit Suisse in January 2020, reveals that digital currencies are “unlikely to gain consumer-to-business payments adoption at least for the medium term.”

In the report, difficulties with chargebacks and dispute processes, taxation, regulatory uncertainty, and price volatility were cited as possible factors to delay its adoption.