By
Mayowa Adebajo
April 18th, 2024
The NBE and LuLu Exchange partnership with Ripple comes as one of the latest pieces of evidence that the company’s business is healthy and growing.
Blockchain payments firm Ripple Labs Inc unveiled on Tuesday that the National Bank of Egypt (NBE) and LuLu International Exchange, a financial services operator based in the United Arab Emirates has inked a strategic partnership to facilitate interstate remittances using the company’s global payment infrastructure RippleNet.
Cash remittances are very vital to maintaining a robust economy for most countries. Despite the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was no slowing down to how well people send money home to family and friends. Based on the current provisions from traditional financial institutions, these cross-border remittance process generally takes a long time and is highly cost-intensive. This obvious challenge is being tackled by Ripple who builds its payments infrastructure on the blockchain.
What NBE and LuLu will Get with RippleNet
Egypt ranks behind countries like India, China, Mexico, and the Philippines as the fifth nation with the largest remittance inflows. In 2020, the country recorded about $20 billion in remittance, money that was injected into keeping the balance as citizens battle lockdowns. To bring a stress-free experience to its citizens, the NBE partnership with LuLu exchange to utilize RippleNet will considerably cut down costs, and the speed of transactions.
“Egypt ranks amongst the top five countries worldwide in terms of remittances received from its overseas expatriate communities. Given the important role remittances play in the Egyptian economy, the National Bank of Egypt is continuously aiming to develop and enhance the infrastructure which pertains to this line of business,” said Hesham Elsafty, Group Head for Financial Institutions and International Financial Services at NBE. ”NBE’s partnership with Ripple will help to improve overall efficiency by enabling NBE to establish new alliances across wider markets with reduced cost and quicker integration time.”
Following the partnership, Ripple looks to help “bolster the MENA region’s financial infrastructure and provide a frictionless cross-border payments experience for the Egyptian community,” according to Navin Gupta, Ripple’s Managing Director of South Asia and MENA.
Ripple Has Healthy Business Thanks to Its Partnerships
The NBE and LuLu Exchange partnership with Ripple comes as one of the latest pieces of evidence that the company’s business is healthy and growing. Ripple can be said to be embattled per its ongoing legal brawl with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, but it is by no means battered.
Back in March, Coinspeaker reported that Ripple acquired as much as a 40% stake in payments firm Tranglo to help facilitate its cross-border payment business among various remittance corridors in Asia. A number of partnerships like this have helped allay the impacts of the crumbled business relationship between its former US ally Moneygram International Inc (NASDAQ: MGI).
The SEC probe into the company and its executives in relation to XRP has had its toll, however, there are reports the firm is looking to a brighter side of an IPO, as a settlement with the regulators appears imminent than ever before.