San Francisco-based fintech firm Ripple will launch a product called the “Ripple Liquidity Hub” to give business customers access to the BTC, ETH, LTC, ETC and BCH cryptocurrencies from a range of global exchanges, market makers and over-the-counter desks. The product will also include XRP, Ripple’s native coin that it already offers with its existing services.
The Ripple Liquidity Hub will use smart order routing to find digital assets at the best prices, according to an announcement Tuesday. The first partner for the new service is Coinme, the payments and crypto ATM company that is now working with Walmart to allow customers to buy bitcoin at about 200 kiosks in Walmart stores.
Ripple plans to add features such as support for staking and yield generating functions and will explore getting liquidity from decentralized exchanges (DEXs), said Asheesh Birla, general manager RippleNet, a cross-border payments system. The Ripple Liquidity Hub will go live in early 2022, Birla told CoinDesk.
The infrastructure for the service is already mostly in place, said Birla, thanks to the company’s RippleNet and On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) products. Branching out to include more cryptocurrencies was a response to customer demand, he said.
“We had a lot of expertise in connecting our customers that wanted to move money across borders by leveraging crypto exchanges,” Birla said. “Then we started hearing from our customers, saying, ‘Hey, we were buying cross-border payment liquidity from you; can we also buy crypto liquidity in terms of the ability to buy bitcoin and ether and other assets for our customers?’”
Birla said working with Coinme is a “match made in heaven.”
“What’s great about the partnership with Coinme is they have the right product to service end consumers with their Walmart deal,” Birla said. “They have a working capital issue when sourcing cryptocurrencies because they have to pay out bitcoin and other assets immediately when folks go to their ATM, but they don’t always get the cash several days later.”
