In the first quarter of the year alone, Ripple paid MoneyGram $16.6 million in incentives in XRP.
This is what is stated in the MoneyGram International Reports of Q1 2020, where it is also pointed out that the total incentives paid in the two previous quarters were only 11.3 million.
It was a significant increase, so much so that the CEO of MoneyGram, Alexander Holmes, said:
“We continue to be extremely pleased with the Ripple partnership”.
MoneyGram is a listed company, so it is required to publish this information every quarter. The $16.6 million was paid by Ripple in XRP as fees for developing its market.
Ripple is paying these fees to MoneyGram as an incentive for it to use its RippleNet solution, and to provide liquidity to the exchange markets, in particular through its On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) platform.
The fees are paid in XRP and MoneyGram has stated that it sells XRP on the market as soon as it receives them. In other words, the company does not hold the XRP it earns.
Despite this, during the current year, the price of XRP on the markets has increased. At the beginning of the year, it was worth less than $0.2, while now it is worth about $0.22. By mid-February it had actually risen to almost $0.34, only to collapse to $0.13 during the financial market crisis in mid-March. Since then, however, the price has recovered, with a slow but relatively steady rise to the current $0.22.
Ripple also pays incentives to several other customers to use its solutions, such as PNB Bank and goLance.
Ripple said that these types of incentive programs are common practice for companies undergoing growth and that some established players such as VISA, MasterCard and PayPal also use them.
