Ripple Prepares to Expand Payments Business in US

Ripple says it’s planning to expand its payments business in the U.S.

Right now, 90% of the blockchain company’s business is based outside the U.S., Ripple senior director and head of product marketing, W. Oliver Segovia, said on LinkedIn last week.

“After being relatively quiet for the past 3 years in the US for Ripple Payments, we’re geared up to announce new product updates powered by our money transmitter licenses (MTLs) that cover the majority of US states,” Segovia wrote.

To launch this effort, Ripple is hosting an event Wednesday (Feb. 7) at its new headquarters in San Francisco featuring representatives from payments firms such as Adyen, Marqeta and Plaid to discuss the company’s “blockchain and payments outlook.”

Segovia’s announcement comes weeks after Ripple announced it had updated its crypto-enabled cross-border payments solution. 

The newly enhanced Ripple Payments, formerly known as RippleNet, lets businesses leverage the blockchain easily for quicker, cheaper and more efficient cross-border payments. 

“Since the start, Ripple focused on creating products that solve real problems for real customers,” Monica Long, president at Ripple, said in a news release. “This evolution of Ripple Payments represents an extension of our long-running work to optimize the cross-border payments experience through transformative technology.” 

In one major update, Ripple Payments now provides expanded access to the company’s worldwide network of more than 70 cryptocurrency and traditional payout markets, providing close to 100% global payout coverage through a single onboarding.

In addition, the solution is also being rolled out to a wider customer base, including small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), as Ripple has secured more than 30 licenses across the United States.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS spoke in October with Pat Thelen, vice president of global account management at Ripple, about the way blockchain-led innovations around programmability, immutability and global transaction delivery are advancing the payments industry.

“We see the tokenization of real-world assets as about as exciting as anything out there,” Thelen said. “If you apply the technology to industries that have been around forever and are fraught with manual processes and illiquidity and latency, there are some real opportunities where so much cost can be taken out of the equation. You can get pretty clever as these use cases unfold.”