Ripple acquires 40% stake in Trango to address SE Asia’s ‘fragmented payments landscape’

Ripple, the San Francisco-based blockchain firm, is in the news today after it announced that it has acquired a 40% stake in Asian cross-border payments pioneer Tranglo as part of its expansion of Ripplenet’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) in Southeast Asia.

The timing of the said announcement is particularly interesting, especially since it is evidence of the fact that despite Ripple’s ongoing lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the blockchain payments provider is continuing to expand its position in the Southeast Asian market.

Tranglo, the company in question, supports business payments, payment collections, money transfers, and mobile recharges and has branches in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Dubai, and London.

This agreement between Ripple and Tranglo will aid the respective platforms to combine their expertise to address Southeast Asia’s highly fragmented payments landscape. The deficiency of a common cross-border payment platform has led to expensive workarounds when sending payments between countries in the region.

According to Ripple, Tranglo will continue to play a critical role in supporting existing payments corridors in the region and will introduce new ODL corridors within its current network. The partnership also means that Ripplenet customers using ODL will be able to leverage Ripple’s line of credit to free up working capital and scale cross-border payments into more markets than ever before.

Asheesh Birla, General manager of RippleNet at Ripple, welcomed the announcement and said,

“Tranglo’s robust payments infrastructure coupled with their unparalleled customer service and quality makes them an ideal partner to support our expansion of On-Demand Liquidity starting with the Southeast Asia region.”

Jacky Lee, Chief Executive Officer at Tranglo, also made a statement following the same,

“By partnering closely with Ripple and introducing On-Demand Liquidity to new markets, we aim to further that ambition to provide accessible and equitable financial services to the masses.”

Post the regulatory approval of this partnership, Amir Sarhangi, Vice President of Product and Delivery at Ripple, and Ripple’s Managing Director Brooks Entwistle will be scheduled to join Tranglo’s board of directors.

Trango won’t be the first platform using Ripplenet for its operations in this region. A while back, Azimo started using Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity for faster international payments into the Philippines. At the time, Azimo’s CEO had said,

“Ripple’s ODL solution has significantly reduced the cost and delivery time for cross-border transfers, and our customers are seeing the benefits.”