Earlier this week, payments platform Modulr announced a partnership with Ripple, which claims to be the leader in enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions, in order to enable payments into the UK and Europe.
Trust Payments, the international unified payments group, is reportedly the first customer to go live and start benefiting from the collaboration.
Together, the two Fintechs will aim to make it easier for businesses, like Trust Payments, to run real-time payments globally, all powered by Ripple’s, RippleNet. With Modulr’s tech, global businesses have an alternative to legacy correspondent banking and can now “make payments into the UK and Europe faster, more reliable, and cost-effective.”
Since inception, Modulr has focused on “building a seamless Payments-as-a-Service solution into the European and UK payment rails – with access to critical payment infrastructure in the UK including Faster Payments and Bacs, CHAPS, SWIFT and SEPA in Europe.”
Its access and expertise of the European payments ecosystem, made Modulr a suitable partner for Ripple. As noted in the update, Modulr is one of few non-banks to be “directly connected to the Bank of England, allowing the payments platform to settle funds at the Central Bank.”
As the first firm to directly benefit from the partnership between Ripple and Modulr, Trust Payments can “continue to expand its service and deliver new payment options.”
Jonathan O’Connor, Chief Commercial Officer of Trust Payments, said:
“Trust Payments continues its disruption in payments with the partnership between Modulr and Ripple delivering a new payment option for settlements. We want to ensure we offer merchants alternatives to traditional methods with reduced fees and increasing the speed of funding to their accounts.”
Together, Ripple and Modulr look forward to offering real-time, price-competitive and reliable payments into the region, “from the Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America and Middle East regions.”
Sendi Young, MD of RippleNet in Europe remarked:
“Ripple is thrilled to partner with Modulr, who has a deep knowledge and expertise of the payments landscape, as well as unrivaled connections to critical payment infrastructure in the UK. Together we look forward to providing faster, simpler cross-border payments experience for customers on RippleNet into the UK and Europe.”
Myles Stephenson, CEO and Founder of Modulr added:
“We’re excited to partner with Ripple – we share the same fundamental goal which is to make it easy to send and control global business payment flows by removing the hidden inefficiencies plaguing international payments today. This partnership lays the groundwork for even bigger things to come. At Modulr, we’re looking forward to working with Ripple on delivering real-time, price competitive and reliable payments into the UK and Europe, and then globally in the coming months.”
Ripple is considered to be the market leader in blockchain and crypto enterprise solutions. Last year, Ripple claims that it had “the most successful year to date, more than doubling the number of transactions on RippleNet, with a payment volume run rate of over $10B.”
RippleNet leverages blockchain or DLT to “help partners across a global network accelerate their business performance and scale.” It delivers “a superior end-customer experience, simplified network partnering, liquidity management solutions, lines of credit, and state-of-the-art infrastructure to enable real-time payments.”
Modulr is authorized and regulated by the FCA as an Electronic Money Institution (Modulr FS Limited), and so can “issue GBP accounts with dedicated account numbers and sort codes.”
As a direct participant of the Faster Payments and Bacs schemes, they “hold and settle funds at the Bank of England, providing reliability and security for users.”
In the EU, Modulr is authorized and regulated as an Electronic Money Institution by the Central Bank of Ireland (Modulr FS Europe Limited) and Modulr Finance B.V. is authorized and regulated by De Nederlandsche Bank in the Netherlands and EU.