Home » Ripple’s Executive Asheesh Birla Hits Back At $11M Moneygram Payment Allegations With A Fierce Reply

Ripple’s Executive Asheesh Birla Hits Back At $11M Moneygram Payment Allegations With A Fierce Reply

Sateesh Swaminanthan
February 26, 2020
8:19 am

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Coindesk published news related to MoneyGram and ripple stating that it got 11 million in US Dollars as payment.
The news was not taken lightly by MoneyGram and Asheesh Birla SVP of Product and Corp Dev. at Ripple and Board Observer at MoneyGram.
Coindesk misinterpreted the situation stating that Ripple and MGI are strategic partners.

Coindesk: Fake news?

On February 25, 2020, Coindesk published news related to MoneyGram and Ripple stating that it got 11 million in US Dollars as a payment to use it’s Cross-border payment tech.

The news claimed that MoneyGram “An American money transfer company based in the United States itself” has received over $11 million from Ripple in the period of 6 months as regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The news goes like that the funds are broken up between two quarters, In the third quarter $2.4 million and an additional $8.9 million in the fourth quarter which sums up to more than $11 million.

In quarter 4 MoneyGram said the sum as Financial benefit or Incentive and was not included in its revenue which reported as $323.7 million which was accounted as contra expenses in their Operating expenses following the recommendation by Securities and Exchange Commission.

Coindesk affirmed that the new filings do not state what Ripple $11million is paying for but Money gram’s third-quarter filing, however, said its agreement with ripple allows money gram to utilize Ripple’s ODL blockchain product that was known as XRapid and now XRP to facilitate settlements happen on cross borders.

The sum received from the ripple is compensation for developing and bringing liquidity to foreign exchange markets that are facilitated by Ripple’s Blockchain.

Asheesh Birla hits hard

However, the news was not taken lightly by MoneyGram and Asheesh Birla SVP of Product and Corp Dev. at Ripple and Board Observer at MoneyGram finally broke out on twitter

Always with the hysteria…first, Ripple and MGI are strategic partners – we are building new infrastructure together. This market development requires a ton of work, effort, and resources. Surprise, that costs money! 1/3 https://t.co/Y3BSdBH6Xx

— Asheesh Birla (@ashgoblue) February 26, 2020

the tweet was about how Coindesk misinterpreted the situation stating that Ripple and MGI are strategic partners as Ripple owns a 10% stake in MoneyGram they are building new infrastructure together and development costs money.

He justified the $11 million dollars as a development fund by giving facts like Visa and Paypal have employed incentive programs to boost network adoption from the first day. He even stated that Visa had allocated a casual $4.1 billion on incentives alone in 2019.

In the last tweet, he completed his third part of the tweet saying that MGI is actively working on expanding to new corridors and even working to integrate Ripple Network for Account-to-Account transfers In 2020.

He also clarified that the ODI reduces their capital cost because of the production efficiencies and that doesn’t mean they are receiving any fees from Ripple.