The XRP price has risen by more than 10% after Ripple announced the launch of its first on-demand liquidity (ODL) service in Japan.
The price of XRP, native token of the Ripple network, has risen more than 10% in the last 24 hours, hitting a five-week high. XRP rose to $0.736 - a price level not seen since June 20.
Ripple's XRP is also the biggest gainer among the top 100 crypto assets by market cap - followed by crypto exchange Huobi's native token (HT) and Decred (DCR).
However, the cryptocurrency has retreated slightly from its previous highs and is currently trading at $0.717, according to CoinGecko.
The token's price received a boost after Ripple, the blockchain company developing XRP-based payment solutions, announced the launch of the first live implementation of RippleNet's on-demand liquidity (ODL) service in Japan.
RippleNet is a global network of financial institutions working to make cross-border payments cheaper and faster. With On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) - a service that uses XRP to source liquidity in transactions - RippleNet customers can use XRP to bridge different currencies within seconds, so payments are sent and received in the local currency on both sides of a transaction.
High demand for cheap remittances
To launch ODL in Japan, Ripple has partnered with SBI Remit, the country's largest money transfer provider and a subsidiary of Ripple shareholder SBI Holdings. The project targets remittance payments from Japan to the Philippines and includes two other partnerships - coins.ph, a popular mobile wallet for digital currencies in the Philippines, and digital asset exchange platform SBI VC Trade.
With the launch of ODL in Japan, Ripple is responding to the high demand for low-cost remittance services for the growing Filipino population - the third largest in the country, according to local reports. Last year alone, remittance flows from Filipino workers from Japan to the Philippines amounted to about US$1.8 billion, the company said.
However, Japan has one of the highest fees for cross-border payments in the world - according to the World Bank, the average cost of money transfers from Japan is 10.5% - almost double the average of all G8 countries (5.92%).
RippleNet is currently active in more than 55 countries in five regions. In the Philippines, the liquidity service has been available since 2020: That's when Ripple took on local digital money transfer provider Azimo as a RippleNet partner.
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