Ripple/XRP: Mercury FX completes first commercial payment to Philippines using xRapid

Ripple’s plan to emerge as a leader in the field of global payments settlement were boosted after its partner, Mercury FX, successfully completed a cross-border payment to the Philippines on February 5, 2019.

Mercury FX tweeted,

“Mercury has just made history and completed the first ever commercial payment using #xRapid to the Philippines… The payment was made for an individual client to pay for his honeymoon at the @edgewaterdive Spa Resort in the Philippines.”

The company further mentioned that they were open for business for payments to two countries, Mexico and the Philippines. The fact that the movement of cryptocurrency payments between the two countries was processed within seconds suggested that the technology around payments is radically improving.

According to Mercury FX’s tweets, people can now send money by opening an account that supports over 40 currencies. However, any such payment has to be over £5,000 for it to be profitable.

At the recent Ripple Regionals conference, Alastair Constance, the CEO, and founder of Mercury FX, stated,

“We did our first live commercial payments a couple of weeks ago. So we are now making payments for a UK corporate to Mexico to import Mexican food. And they are moving a lot faster than payments would go through Swift, at a much lower cost…”

Constance revealed the company’s future plans at the same conference, which involved the expansion of their xRapid corridors by setting up shops in the Middle East and Canada.

Apart from Mercury FX, banks in the UAE are already gearing up to establish xRapid corridors, according to Mohsen Al Zahrani, VP Strategy & Excellence at Saudi Payments. He also said that two banks in the UAE will be going live soon. SendFriend, another startup that focuses on cross-border payments to the Philippines to help overseas Filipino workers is already using xRapid.

@sarcasticlegend, a Twitter user commented,

“But wouldn’t it have been easier for him and the spa to both prefund a lightning ⚡channel…send 20-30 smaller payments to not clog the system (so it had a good chance of going through) and wait 24 hours praying a node didn’t go offline during the transaction? What’s the hurry?”

A Twitter user @kalycabos tweeted,

“congratulations and welcome to the new era of cross-border transactions business!!!”