MoneyGram Teams Up With Earthport To Use Ripple Tech for Remittances to Romania

Founded in London, Earthport operates as a digital payment infrastructure company leveraging the Ripple Consensus Ledger technology to accelerate international fund transfers while reducing costs and enhancing visibility throughout the process. The firm maintains operational presence across more than 70 nations and maintains links to over 60 systems for local currency settlement. These connections include "critical payment pathways necessary for MoneyGram's expansion," according to company statements.

Earlier this year, Earthport unveiled its Blockchain Hub—a unified entry point enabling financial institutions to plug into the Ripple ecosystem with minimal implementation complexity and expenditure. At that time, the company signaled intentions to onboard additional blockchain technologies down the road. Hank Uberoi, CEO of Earthport and previously an executive at Goldman Sachs, elaborated: "We anticipate that multiple ledgers will emerge as industry standards over time—some tied to specific geographies, others built around particular sectors. Financial institutions will require connections to an expanding array of ledgers to properly serve their clientele, creating increasingly intricate technology challenges."

Ahead of the MoneyGram collaboration, Earthport established a partnership with Sri Lanka's Commercial Bank of Ceylon Plc., enabling transfers into local Sri Lankan accounts. This move reflected the company's strategy to fortify its Asian operations following the establishment of a Singapore office in mid-2015. The firm also established a presence in Dubai, signaling aggressive regional development. "We've set up operations in Singapore and Dubai, and we're investing substantially in those markets," Uberoi stated during a February conversation with ProactiveInvestors. "In our recent quarterly briefing, we emphasized how significantly we're stepping up our focus on Asia as a whole."

Earthport already counts major international banking institutions among its partners—Bank of America Merrill Lynch, HSBC, Standard Chartered, and Japan Post Bank—with "additional major institutions under discussion," Uberoi noted. McKinsey & Company projections suggest that global payments sector revenues will expand at around 6% annually over the coming years, potentially surpassing US$2 trillion by 2020. The Asia-Pacific region stands out as a significant growth engine, having produced US$75 billion in payments revenue during 2014 alone, while generating nearly 55% of worldwide payments growth during that period.