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- According to Ripple manager Navin Gupta, the coronavirus is causing a growing shift from physical to digital money transfers worldwide.
- Ripple is continuously working to expand its presence through new XRP payment corridors, particularly in South East Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
In an interview with Finance Magnates, Navin Gupta, Ripple’s Managing Director for Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), spoke about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Ripple and it’s activities in the MENA region. According to Gupta, COVID-19 has a major impact on the way people handle money. As he observed, there is an increasing shift of the global economy from paper to digitization.
Ripple’s data shows that lockdowns around the world are forcing people and businesses to transfer money digitally. As Gupta noted, this trend could continue after the corona crisis, and Ripple could also benefit from this:
One is that we’re seeing a big shift from paper or ‘touch-based’ or physical to digital […] So, there is a shift in terms of our customers who have a very strong digital footprint, who are ‘digital first’–banks or payment companies. Definitely, what we are seeing is that their business has been going up, and that this ‘shift to digital’ has been accelerated by this crisis.
Work on new XRP payment corridors heavily dependent on regulation
With regard to Ripple’s focus on the MENA region, Gupta further explained that this market has significant potential. South Asia is characterized by the fact that a large number of people are migrant workers, such as Filipino nurses working around the world, Indian developers working in various industries around the world.
This group of people, Gupta says, tends to send money back home to their families. Therefore, there tends to be a very large remittance stream throughout Asia, which is a major application for Ripple at this stage.
if you look at the volume itself, the first problem that Ripple is solving–that comes from remittances. These are individuals. If there are ten people from ‘X’ country living overseas in a send market, it follows that every year, they are sending at least 120 transactions–12 into 10, or sometimes more. If you look at the b2b transactions, they’re [certainly]there–but the value is larger, and the volume is smaller.
The next step for Ripple, according to Gupta, is to be present all over the world and open up new payment corridors.
Ripple is already in the second phase where the tech is already proven. It’s very important for us to make sure that we focus on having customers in every single receive market around the world. And we make sure that we cover every product type for the beneficiary who wants to receive money.
In terms of opening new payment corridors, Gupta stated that the first step is always to ensure that the use of XRP to move money across borders is fully compliant with the legal regulations in each country:
We believe for Ripple to become mainstream, we need to work with the regulators. We need to earn the trust of the regulators and explain to them what we are doing, why we are doing it, and what the benefit is to their constituents.
BIS and Deutsche Bank also predict trend towards digital money
As CNF reported, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), also called the “Central Bank of Central Banks”, recently published a report that the corona pandemic could encourage the elimination of cash and the introduction of digital currencies. A Deutsche Bank study has also confirmed this trend.
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