Coinspeaker
Ripple’s Partners MoneyGram and Ria to Power Walmart’s Money Transfer Service

United States’ retail behemoth Walmart has decided to expand its current offerings of financial services by offering money remittance services within its network of nearly 5,000 stores across America. It already has two money transfer services (the Walmart2Walmart and Walmart2World service launched last year) but the retail giant has also decided to power Walmart2World with Ripple‘s partners MoneyGram and Ria.

November 4, 2019.

"@Walmart is announcing the next step in its commitment to help customers save on money transfers by creating, in collaboration with MoneyGram and Ria, an international money transfer marketplace serving all 4,700 U.S. Walmart stores"
https://t.co/9wAXjLf9gZ

— XRP Research Center (@XrpCenter) November 5, 2019

Walmart indicated this in a press statement indicating money transfer costs and flexibility as the major reasons why it was entering the partnerships. The company wrote:

 “Through its marketplace, Walmart2World will offer customers even more choices for payout methods, more payout locations around the world, and more competitive foreign exchange rates, all at a transparent, flat, low-cost transfer fee”.

The press statement went further to indicate that users of the Walmart2World service will also be able to choose between MoneyGram and Ria when making transfers thus giving the user greater flexibility in the choice of service.

This, of course, indicates that Ripple Labs with its solutions, many of which are powered by XRP, is making the kind of effect in the financial world that most of the cryptocurrency-related firms haven’t had yet. 

The partnerships with MoneyGram, Ria and over 200 other partners in the international financial sector has something to do with this as well. 

Also, the fact that the tools on RippleNet such as xCurrent and xRapid deliver results without the costs incurred by other transfer systems and in less time indicates that the Ripple ecosystem is sound and works well with different kinds of financial systems as well. 

MoneyGram on its part reacted in a statement from its CEO Alex Holmes. He said:

“MoneyGram and Walmart have worked closely together for over two decades and have innovated to provide the world’s leading money transfer service for consumers in the United States.”

“Walmart’s vision of creating a marketplace for financial services will benefit consumers through pricing and payout options, and we believe that our leading brand and competitive foreign exchange rates will help drive the future success of the marketplace,” added he.

The friendly relationship between Walmart and MoneyGram has been indicated by the extension of MoneyGram’s’ arrangement with Walmart through to 2021 showing a long-term view of the partnership between both institutions as well. 

Juan Bianchi, Chief Executive Officer, Euronet’s Money Transfer Segment also spoke about the retail giant’s new partnership with Ria:

“We are excited Walmart has chosen to expand its relationship with Ria in their mission to provide customers more choice and the most economical and transparent services at the best price.”

In what seems like a strange twist of fate and a boost to the crypto space, Ripple Labs Inc’s RippleNet already has an effective global outreach and more than 200 financial institutions and partners who work with it are in force to reckon global remittances and settlements. 

This further gives credence to the fact that innovative solutions such as the Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm (RPCA) can work alongside traditional first-generation blockchain systems which mostly are around a decade old but are still thriving.

In the end, it is only one aim that is being achieved with developments such as this: adoption of blockchain technology is on the rise. And only the time will show whether it will continue in the future.

Ripple’s Partners MoneyGram and Ria to Power Walmart’s Money Transfer Service

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