Ripple And Moneygram Deal Cut To Test Payment Processing

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Moneygram, that place with exorbitant fees to transfer money “fast,” inked a deal with Ripple for payment processing tests. Hopefully, the Ripple and Moneygram deal will lower those fees and greatly reduce the time it takes to send the money. Who knew that Moneygram was even relevant in the age of Paypal, Venmo, Google Wallets and Facebook payments?

Last Generation’s Paypal

Moneygram is like last generation’s Paypal, where you had to actually step foot in a store to send money to someone else. Doing a fee comparison of Moneygram shows they are charging around 11-13% for the cash transfer fee which is ridiculous considering you pay online or drop off cash at one place and the other person picks up cash at the other. It’s not like the cash has to actually be moved. On top of that, even if you send the cash online, the receiver still has to go get it from a Moneygram location.

So it seems wise to sign a Ripple and Moneygram deal in order to reduce those costs and speed up processing of money transfers. Their market share must have plummeted more and more every time a new online mode of money transfer showed up with lower fees and no requirement to leave the couch.

Ripple Effect

For Ripple, which often surges and submerges based on news, this was a pretty good week to have something positive. The cryptocurrency has been in pretty much in freefall since Monday when Coinbase delisted some Korean exchanges and XRP price dropped dramatically from $3.36 down to $2.07 with a day end price of $2.46. For the week, Ripple bottomed out at $1.70 and even with this news it still only mustered a rally to $2.00.

As for Moneygram, their stock opened just under $14.00 around noon today and took a slow tumble down to $12.18 where it closed for the day. Seems their investors aren’t ready to ride Ripple to success.

Even with the Ripple and Moneygram deal, Ripple just cannot seem to hold on to any gains it might claw back in a day. Perhaps because Ripple keeps partnering up with dinosaurs of finance instead of attempting to break free of the old way and look to the future. Of course, it is a company that based its business model on being the payment processor to those dinosaurs. Maybe savvy cryptocurrency investors know it’s just not worth what the company thinks it is and just use it for some quick gains now and again when news hits. With its value back nearly where it started the day, it might be a good time to re-enter in hopes of some quick gains based on some more good news for them tomorrow.

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