MIT-backed startup SendFriend taps Ripple’s xRapid for cross-border payments

SendFriend, a consumer payments platform set to launch this year, is integrating Ripple’s xRapid solution in order to enhance the efficiency of cross-border payments, Daily Hodl reported.

CEO David Lighton originally founded SendFriend at MIT. The platform is backed by a roster of well known organizations including MIT Media Lab, Barclays, Mahindra Finance, Techstars, and the MasterCard Foundation. It aims to enable expatriates send money back home to their friends and family in a cost-effective manner.

According to American Banker, the SendFriend app will soon allow people who live in New Jersey to transfer money to the Philippines. The company is currently in the process of getting a money transmitter license in each state.

xRapid, Ripple’s on-demand liquidity solution, was launched in beta in late last summer. It uses XRP token for more efficient cross-border transactions between financial institutions sending fiat payments. In May 2018, Ripple announced that financial institutions that participated in xRapid pilots have seen huge cost savings and increased speed when using Ripple’s XRP token for on-demand liquidity.

SendFriend Chief Revenue Officer David Anderson said that xRapid enhances the efficiency of the process.

“That allows us on the back end to be more efficient with our capital,” he said. “These are real time settlements so we don't have to do pre-funding, we don't have to park money in the receiving corridor and then manage the foreign exchange risk. We can just do it one by one as the transactions go through.”