Ripple has inked a deal with a Malaysian money transfer business and Bangladesh’s largest mobile financial services provider to enable a remittance corridor between the two countries.
According to an announcement Tuesday, Malaysia’s Mobile Money and Bangladesh’s bKash will leverage Ripple’s global payments network, RippleNet, for wallet-to-wallet transactions.
“This partnership will … contribute further to our national economy by encouraging inward foreign remittance flow through legal channels,” said bKash CEO Kamal Quadir.
Under the purview of Bangladesh’s central bank, Mutual Trust Bank (MTB) will function as the domestic banking partner to undertake remittance settlements.
While MobileMoney represents a small fraction of Malaysia’s mobile payments, bKash boasts a user base exceeding 45 million. The company currently captures a large portion of the country’s remittance flows, the third-largest in South Asia.
“Last year, Bangladesh remittances reached an all-time high of 18.2 billion U.S. dollars with the majority of these remittances coming from Malaysia, Middle Eastern countries and the U.S.,” said Mutual Bank CEO Syed Mahbubur Rahman.
The partners do not seem deterred by Ripple’s legal troubles in the U.S. The company is being sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the claim it violated federal securities laws by selling the XRP cryptocurrency to retail consumers.