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***this is speculation*** In the wake of AliPay's announcement of launching a cross-border remittance service powered by blockchain technology, a closer inspection of the partnerships reveals several layers of Ripple associates. The cross-border remittance services into the Philippines will be offered by in a collaboration between GCash, AliPay, and Standard Chartered. With further details on Standard Chartered's involvement, https://www.pymnts.com/news/cross-border-commerce/2018/alipay-gcash-blockchain-cross-border-remittance-philippines/ Standard Chartered is currently a RippleNet adopter, primarily using it for cross-border payments between India and Singapore. The bank has also broadcasted it's plans on extending it's utilization of RippleNet to five other countries/pairs this year. https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/32048/standard-chartered-to-extend-use-of-ripplenet-to-more-countries Standard Chartered acting as the settlement bank by offering it's infrastructure to both AliPay and GCash for remittance services, falls into Winters statement of expanding it's capabilities to other currency pairs with the Philippine Piso (PHP), the Hong Kong Dollar (HKD), and the Chinese Yaun/renminbi (CNY) being the suspects. GCash in itself also has an abundance of service and associate overlaps with Ripple. Currently GCash and it's services such as GCASH REMIT into the Philippines is consisted of SoftBank Payments and Globe Telecom. https://www.gcash.jp/?lg=e SBI Holdings' business relationship with SoftBank has been under speculation since SBI's involvement with Ripple but Globe Telecom can reveal other intentions of GCash. GCash is not the only notable subsidiary of Globe Telecom, Mynt is another subsidiary of Globe Telecom's financial technology arm that includes Ayala Corp and Ant Financial(AliPay/Alibaba). https://www.mynt.xyz/about-us/ The significance of Mynt pertains to an announcement this past March. Globe Telecom with Ayala Corp and Ant Financial thru Mynt, partnered with MoneyGram to provide remittance services into the Philippines to smartphone users for their GCash mobile wallets. http://news.abs-cbn.com/business/tech-biz/03/08/18/globe-fintech-arm-moneygram-launch-smartphone-based-remittance-service MoneyGram is well known in the Ripple community for it's involvement in trialing xRapid for a pilot which utilizes the XRP Ledger (XRP) for cross-border payments. http://ir.moneygram.com/news-releases/news-release-details/ripple-and-moneygram-partner-modernize-payments As of now, we publicly know that Mynt (Globe Telecom, Ayala Corp, and Ant Financial) partnered with MoneyGram to improve remittance services into the Philippines for GCash mobile wallet users. MoneyGram states that it's intention on piloting XRP this past January was because the digital asset offered negligible transaction fees and because the average transaction time involving XRP is 2-3 seconds. Interesting enough, this new remittance service provided by both Alibaba and GCash involves HKD and PHP. And the transaction time publicly shared took only 3 seconds... After Alibaba's failure to acquire MoneyGram this past January (same time as MoneyGram's announcement of it's xRapid pilot), Alibaba was adamant that they would still collaborate with MoneyGram to develop remittance and digital payments to several countries including the Philippines........ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-moneygram-intl-m-a-ant-financial/u-s-blocks-moneygram-sale-to-chinas-ant-financial-on-national-security-concerns-idUSKBN1ER1R7 Very interesting times indeed! Time will only tell EDIT: (more speculation in regards to GCash & Western Union) GXI description, https://businessmirror.com.ph/western-union-expands-digital-distribution-through-gcash-mobile-wallets/

https://www.nasdaq.com/article/moneygram-collaborates-with-gcash-uplifts-digital-platform-cm1016400