The Stellar Development Foundation has added four organizations to its payment network: Coins.ph, Flutterwave, ICICI Bank, and Tempo. All aim to make cross-border money transfers faster and cheaper in
The Stellar Development Foundation has added four organizations to its payment network: Coins.ph, Flutterwave, ICICI Bank, and Tempo. All aim to make cross-border money transfers faster and cheaper in Europe, Africa, India, and the Philippines.
ICICI Bank, one of India's largest private sector banks, plans to test cross-border payments using Stellar. The service would eliminate the traditional expensive wire fees. The bank is also launching a mobile wallet with a Stellar backend for university and office campuses, with plans to extend it to a wider audience later.
Raj Chowdhury, who heads blockchain initiatives at ICICI, said the bank "envisions blockchain technology playing a key role in banking in the years ahead." He noted that with blockchain technology, "we are able to conduct business seamlessly with parties with which we had no prior relationships." "Blockchain platforms such as Stellar.org are providing us with an automated technology solution to establish trust without the need for an intermediary," Chowdhury said. "This technology is enabling us to conduct business a lot quicker, cheaper with lower error rates and lower vulnerability to cyber threats. It is helping us eradicate the need for post transaction settlements, which are cumbersome and expensive," he added.
Coins.ph, a Filipino bitcoin startup, will use Stellar to let customers send money to anyone in the Philippines with a phone number, routing payments through a Stellar wallet or any connected institution.
Flutterwave, a pan-African fintech company, will route cross-border payments to M-Pesa, the leading mobile finance platform in Africa. M-Pesa has 21 million users restricted to transactions within Kenya. The expansion allows them to send payments across Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria.
Tempo Money Transfer, a licensed remittance provider based in Paris, will use the Stellar network to send global transfers from Europe to other financial institutions on the network. Nigeria's Parkway is using Stellar to connect the country's five major mobile carriers, letting customers transfer money between them.
Jed McCaleb, Stellar's creator, explained the power of the network in a blog announcement. "Why this is powerful is that, by integrating with Stellar, all of these organizations will immediately gain access to all the other institutions on the Stellar network, enabling their customers to send and receive low-cost and instant money transfers," he wrote. "In 2017 and beyond, we will keep adding partners to the network, continuing our mission of making a massive impact in how money moves around the world," he added.
Deloitte launched its Digital Bank in May using Stellar for instant cross-border payments. "Banks are eager to replace the legacy systems," Thomas Jankovich, a principal at Deloitte, said. "With all of the friction involved in sending payments—3-7 days to resolve transactions, high fees—we can erase those pain points using cutting-edge technology now," he added.
