Crypto firm Ripple has agreed to acquire a 40% stake in Asian payments specialist Tranglo. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals is expected to occur sometime this year.
The planned investment is aimed at expanding the reach of Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service in Asia, which uses XRP for cross-border transactions.
Ripple said Tranglo would play a “critical” role in supporting its existing ODL corridors, such as the Philippines, and introducing new ODL corridors in the Southeast Asian region.
“Southeast Asia’s payments landscape is highly fragmented. Each country comes with its own unique process and payments infrastructure — the lack of a standard integration for regional cross-border payments currently requires expensive workarounds,” said Ripple. “This partnership will see both companies combine their in-depth local expertise to address the challenges associated with cross-border payments.”
The news comes about a week after Brooks Entwistle, a former executive at Goldman Sachs and Uber, joined Ripple as its managing director of Southeast Asia.
Tranglo is based in Malaysia and has processed over 20 million transactions totaling $4 billion in value since its inception, according to its website. The firm has offices in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, London, Jakarta, and the UAE.
Ripple continues to focus on its business outside the U.S. since the company and two of its executives have been sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly selling XRP without registering it as a security with the agency.
Source: The Block