Ripple Labs is to expand its cross-border payments offering to Africa as it seeks to expand its global footprint in the face of US regulatory pressure.
The firm, whose cryptocurrency XRP is the seventh largest in the world by market capitalization, said it is going into partnership with payments firm MFS Africa, which operates across 35 countries on the continent.
MFS Africa will use Ripple’s on-demand liquidity product known as ODL, which relies on XRP to support cross-border payments such as remittances to help carry out transactions on its platform.
The expansion comes as a lawsuit continues to rage back home in the US for Ripple. The Securities and Exchange Commission is suing the firm for selling XRP as an unregistered security.
The suit, which is worth $1.3bn, effectively represents an argument over whether XRP should be classed as a commodity or a security. Ripple argues the former, while the SEC thinks the latter.