Ripple’s list of partnerships is ever-growing and what with its CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently saying about them signing three production contracts every week, 2019 is going to be even more exciting for Ripple and its community.

There are about nineteen companies that are using xRapid and by extension leveraging the third largest cryptocurrency. Catalyst, Euro Exim Bank, Cuallix, Mercury FX, SBI Virtual Currencies, IDT, Viamericas, SendFriend, Arrington Capital, FlashFX, JNFX, Bitrue, Transpaygo, FTCS, and R3 are those companies. Apart from Coins.ph, Bitso, Bitstamp, and Bittrex, there have also been interest from Binance and eToro for adding xRapid in the future.

Through these partnerships, Ripple is slowly covering the globe with the Philippines lately playing an important role.

Last year, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported that in 2017 remittances contributed US$31.29 billion to the country’s economy. Moreover, the data revealed the remittances through banks from overseas increased by 4.3 percent year-on-year.

Back in late 2015, SendFriend deployed Ripple’s xRapid for cross-border remittances in the Philippines. Later on, the Philippines was the target by its partners MercuryFX, and Transpaygo.

Destination tag 158068 is pushing strong! If this trend continues, we will soon have a new ATH in XRP transacted/month.

Moreover, the activity shows a clear Monday-Friday working day pattern. pic.twitter.com/kKykd1ZMnu

— H_M_X_ (@hmatejx) April 10, 2019

Solving the Pain Points of Southeast Asia Region

Now, Ripple has turned its focus on Southeast Asia that covers Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar among others.

In its latest insight blog titled, “Easing the Pain of Growing Cross-Border Remittance Demand in Southeast Asia,” Ripple covers this zone.

This region has a lot of potential as about $68 billion in Southeast Asia are being sent home. But as it has been pointed out, though demand for fast and affordable cross-border transfers is large, existing services fail to meet it effectively.

As Thomas Kiong, Senior Managing Director of Group Treasury Sales and FX at CIMB, which partnered with Western Union for this puts it, “the economics were very much tilted in their favor. We did 80 percent of the work but only got 20 percent of the reward.” These services are also expensive and time consuming for end customers.

The “region is full of pain” but according to Paul Arriyavat, VP of Disruptive Technology Office and Chief Strategy Officer at Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) it is “also full of opportunities.”

After banking apps, the next step was to partner with blockchain service providers to solve this pain point.

“We started our own proprietary product called SpendSend to service the Malaysia-Indonesia corridor but Western Union barred us from switching it on. We ended that relationship and today SpendSend has a presence in 31 countries because we charge less than $5 USD for an instant payment,” Kiong said.

Now, CIMB is expanding its reach and working on opening up multiple new payment corridors. This $68 billion remittance market for both SCB and CIMB is just the beginning. Though blockchain-powered services, these companies and Ripple are on its way to unlock more opportunities of growth for Southeast Asia’s people and banks.

The Ripple coin is currently trading at $0.32 XRP/USD with a market cap of $13.7 billion.  Make sure to read all of the ripple price predictions and check back with us later today for more Ripple news headlines and stories.