Malaysia's Mobile Money payment system and Bangladesh's bKash service will use the RippleNet payment network to make payments and settlements between the two countries.
Mutual Trust Bank (MTB), a commercial bank, will serve as a money transfer partner. MTB CEO Syed Mahbubur Rahman said that last year remittances in Bangladesh reached a record $18.2 billion, with most of the money coming from Malaysia as well as the Middle East and the United States.
bKash CEO Kamal Quadir said the partnership with Ripple will boost Bangladesh's economy by facilitating the inflow of foreign funds through legal channels. According to Quadir, bKash has a user base of more than 45 million people, and bKash accounts for a third of the country's remittances.
The head of bKash said he was not intimidated by Ripple's legal problems related to the SEC lawsuit. However, many companies have refused to cooperate with Ripple for this very reason. Last month, money transfer service MoneyGram said it was not using Ripple payment solutions to make payments, although it began testing the Ripple ODL platform in 2019.
It's worth noting that RippleNet is in demand among Asian firms. Vietnamese bank TPBank previously joined it to speed up international transactions. In addition, Thai companies DeeMoney and Azimo joined RippleNet last year.