Western Union Announces Tests with Ripple for Overseas Transfers
Global money transfer giant Western Union have announced they will be trialling Ripple in a move to help streamline processes. It was during the companies earnings call that CEO Hikmet Ersek spoke about experimenting with the technology, citing processing settlements and optimization of working capital as use cases.
Obviously generally as a financial institution we do look at blockchain in general and we’ve been doing that for a some time, I would say and we are looking especially in the processing settlement and working capital optimization
Ersek then goes on to say that they have been running tests with Ripple, as well as revealing Western Union is holding investments in the digital currency group. The decision to test these technologies, as well as make it public, was likely due to the recent announcement that their biggest competitor Moneygram has started working with Ripple.
Also significant is that Western Union are running tests with XRP directly, as previously critics had stated that it was not necessary to use Ripples native cryptocurrency for bank transfers. The markets responded well, with Ripple up 10-15% following the news.
