Ripple, the provider of digital asset infrastructure for financial institutions, announced a partnership with Portuguese currency exchange provider Unicâmbio to support instant cross-border payments between Portugal and Brazil using Ripple Payments.
This collab marks the first time that Ripple’s payments solution has been made available in Portugal, “expanding the digital asset leader’s European footprint while strengthening the Portugal-Brazil payments corridor.”
By leveraging Ripple’s payments solution, Unicâmbio’s corporate customers will be able to move funds and “settle payments in a matter of minutes – reducing the time and friction to make moving value more efficient.”
Cassie Craddock, Managing Director, UK & Europe, at Ripple said:
“By connecting our payment networks in Portugal and Brazil we are facilitating faster, more cost-effective cross-border payments, while strengthening the economic bridge between these two major markets. Ripple has over a decade of experience of tokenising real-world assets, starting with bringing fiat currencies onchain to seamlessly send money across borders. As the global cross-border payments market continues to expand, more institutions like Unicâmbio are leaning in to benefit from the inherent benefits of blockchain technology.”
Adriana Jerónimo, Executive Board Member at Unicâmbio said:
“By leveraging blockchain technology we’re transforming money movement between the two nations. Ripple’s crypto-enabled payments solution enables near-instant settlement and drastically reduces costs compared to traditional payments channels, delivering real value to our customers.”
The partnership builds upon Ripple’s presence in Brazil with leading customers like Travelex Bank, which has been a Ripple partner since 2022, and Mercado Bitcoin, Latin America‘s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which “joined Ripple’s network late last year.”
With its compliant digital asset infrastructure, Ripple claims that it is well positioned to “provide the core services that financial institutions need to tokenize, store, exchange and move digital assets.”
Ripple Payments has near-global coverage with “90+ payout markets representing more than 90% coverage of the daily FX markets, processing more than $70 billion in volume.”
Enterprise blockchain firm Ripple says that it has “over a decade of experience in the digital asset space and holds 60+ regulatory licenses and registrations in various jurisdictions.”