Ripple’s XRP payment solution helps save customers up to 80% in remittance fees, says SendFriend CEO

Money transfer firm SendFriend, which utilizes Ripple’s XRP payment solution, claims to help customers save up to 80% in remittance fees.

“Companies like Western Union can charge up to 10% to service a payment—we can get it done for 2%,” said David Lighton, co-founder and CEO of SendFriend, at a conference on Thursday. Lighton explained that Ripple’s solution, On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), removes the need for businesses to pre-fund their accounts in destinations currencies and thus removes the need for that working capital.

ODL enables customers to use XRP “to bridge two currencies in three seconds,” ensuring instant payments, said Ripple. With the solution, SendFriend is able to source liquidity on-demand and cut transaction costs by up to 75%, said Lighton, adding: “Our goal is to pass on these savings to our customers.”

SendFriend currently serves in the Philippines, enabling Filipino users to send and receive money. The firm started using Ripple’s XRP payment solution earlier this year. SendFriend is backed by notable investors, including Barclays, MasterCard Foundation and Ripple, who all participated in its $1.7 million round in February.

Lighton, a former World Bank employee, further said at the conference that high remittance fees is “such a serious problem that number ten of the Sustainable Development Goals has a target of bringing the cost of remittance payments down to three percent by 2030.”

Ripple recently said that “more than two dozen” customers use its ODL solution, including money transfer firms MoneyGram, Viamericas and FlashFX, online workforce platform that connects employers with freelancers goLance, and financial services provider Interbank Peru.