MoneyGram CEO and Chairman, Alexander Holmes, said that the company’s partnership with Ripple was relatively quiet over Q1, 2020. Speaking during an earnings call, Holmes noted that the two entities have not been as active in new service roll-outs so far this year, making it a ‘quiet quarter’ for the collaboration.

“I would say it was a little bit of a relatively quiet quarter, in the sense of really pushing anything particularly new into the market or expanding the service.”

Ripple and MoneyGram began working together back in June 2019; a partnership that was hyped within the FinTech community. The announcement at the time highlighted that MoneyGram would be using Ripple’s for some of its existing global payment services soon. Ripple, in turn, committed capital of up to $50 million over a period of two years in return for an equity stake.

New Markets for MoneyGram with Ripple

Holmes, however, defended the low activity this year noting that they had achieved quite some progress within the last half of 2019,

“We did a lot of that in the back half of last year, and really got going on a number of new corridors for that service.”

He further revealed that they are flexing with Ripple as the firm solidifies its services and target market for better strategies. According to Holmes, Ripple’s existing services will gradually evolve to suit market needs; a factor that will, in turn, vary the results of MoneyGram’s partnership with Ripple on a monthly basis. The CEO was also keen to highlight that they are happy with the progress made so far.

“We also have a variety of new services in the pipeline and things that we'll be rolling out, and expanding with later this year…. But from a capability perspective from a service quality and from a performance, it's been a really good — been a really good quarter.”

“And obviously, a very successful partnership thus far, I think, we continue to flex with them as they continue to expand the service and move some things around, and really figure out what they want, the product to look and feel like, and how they want to take that to various market.”

Going forward, Holmes is optimistic that the new services together with Ripple will help MoneyGram expand into new markets. Currently, Ripple’s potential to scale has already been identified by Intermex, a lead remittance provider within U.S. – Latin America. Intermex CEO, Robert Lisv, recently echoed that their partnership with Ripple will mainly drive expansion to new markets as opposed to existing ones,

“So, you won’t really see us leveraging Ripple in our core markets. I think it will bring us more growth in newer markets in places where we’re exploring going into ancillary products.”