Ripple Partner MoneyGram Says it ‘Doesn’t Utilize ODL or RippleNet’ for Which it was Paid Millions in XRP

Amidst the ongoing distancing from XRP, Ripple partner MoneyGram also issued a statement.

“The Company has not currently been notified or been made aware of any negative impact to its commercial agreement with Ripple,” said MoneyGram, one of the largest companies involved in cross-border P2P payments and money transfer.

The statement came in light of the recent lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against Ripple Labs Inc.

“MoneyGram is not a party to the SEC action,” said the company adding, they will continue to monitor for any impact as things unfold.

MoneyGram came into a commercial agreement with Ripple in June 2019 to use the fintech’s foreign exchange (FX) blockchain trading platform, On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) for the purchase or sale of four currencies. For this, Ripple paid millions of dollars in XRP to MoneyGram. However, the company revealed that, as a matter of fact,

“MoneyGram does not utilize the ODL platform or RippleNet for direct transfers of consumer funds – digital or otherwise.”

Throughout this collaboration, MoneyGram actually continued the use of other traditional FX trading counterparties and says it “is not dependent on the Ripple platform to accomplish its FX trading needs.”

“There were a discussion on Twitter about precisely how MoneyGram used ODL, other ways they could use it, and the advantages and disadvantages of each mechanism,” commented David Schwartz, CTO of Ripple on MoneyGram distancing itself from the company.

Legislation in the 90s paved the way for today’s tech leaders. With a new administration, we can do the same for fintech + crypto. First step: an SEC chair that understands how to advance innovation while protecting consumers and markets, not pro-innovation lip service. https://t.co/afh3VVwUXj

— Asheesh Birla (@ashgoblue) December 23, 2020

This week, XRP got into hot water as the SEC charges Ripple and its two executives, board member and former CEO Chris Larsen and current CEO and board member Brad Garlinghouse for allegedly selling unregistered securities.

This resulted in the price of the digital asset crashing more than 60% and taking the entire crypto market down with it, only to recover the gains to trade around $0.30 XRP -0.09% XRP / USD XRPUSD $ 0.38
$0.00-0.09% Volume 1.07 b Change $0.00 Open $0.38 Circulating 50.95 b Market Cap 19.48 b 1 y Bitcoin and Ether Breaks Trend With Outflows While Altcoins Continue to See Inflows 1 y SBI Holdings to Launch Japan’s First Crypto Fund; Including BTC, ETH, DOT, LINK, LTC, XRP & BCH 1 y Ledger Announces Integration with FTX and Coinbase, Launching Crypto Life Debit Card .

All of this also resulted in the suspension of XRP trading and deposits on several trading platforms. Just yesterday, the oldest crypto exchange Bitstamp suspended the XRP services for its US customers, starting January 8.

OSL, Beaxy, and CloseTowers are other exchanges that suspended XRP trading on their platform while Bitwise Asset Management also liquidated its position in the digital asset.

A very important reminder!  

Thus far the world has heard the SEC's version of reality. The legal process will unfold from here and the world will have a much more robust and complete picture of the facts soon. https://t.co/dcXQkNHZnK

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) December 24, 2020

Garlinghouse meanwhile, maintains that Ripple remains “on the right side of the law and of history.”

“It’s still business as usual,” said Ripple CEO in a publicly shared note sent to the company’s employees this week.

“The SEC is completely wrong on the facts and law and we are confident we will ultimately prevail before a neutral fact-finder.”