The merger with Ant Financial will provide MoneyGram with resources to further develop its technology, systems and anti-money laundering and compliance programs.
MoneyGram has noted that it is not a named party in the SEC vs Ripple lawsuit and that its relationship with the embattled blockchain payment firm remains unchanged barring any new developments.
Earlier this month, Ripple sold $15 million of its MoneyGram stock while not giving any specific reason behind it.
The partnership between Ripple and MoneyGram has been described as symbiotic by most analysts. The latter has been experiencing difficulties in making profits and the XRP incentives have significantly helped it close the debt gap.
Menwhile, MoneyGram is facing several lawsuits in the United States that may damage its future growth prospects.
Ripple has offloaded 2,264,113 MGI shares i.e. 33% of its stake as per the latest filing with the US SEC. The blockchain startup hasn’t given any specific reason for this decision.
It comes only a year after Ripple announced its partnership with MoneyGram getting a 17% stake in the company’s outstanding shares. Over the last year, Ripple has reportedly paid around $52 million to MoneyGram.
In Q3 2020, MoneyGram continued to receive huge “market development fees” from its investors. Its major partner Ripple handed over $9.3 million over the period.
Ripple’s strong partner and Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings wants them to relocate to Japan as the blockchain startup faces major regulatory hurdles in the U.S.
Ripple launched On-Demand Liquidity using XRP in 2018. Since then, the firm now has over 24 clients including Azimo and MoneyGram.
XRP Ledger’s sustainable nature is expected to propel XRP transactions to escalate by nearly 1,000% by 2025, according to independent researchers’ predictions.