Ripple’s investment arm Xpring has invested into cryptocurrency wallet BRD to enable users to hold, purchase, sell and spend XRP tokens through the wallet.
Xpring announced the development in an Oct. 11 blog post, noting that BRD — a mobile cryptocurrency wallet, with a reported user base of 2.5 million — will build on the Xpring platform to support and integrate XRP.
Large user base and geography
By selecting BRD, Xpring ostensibly focused on the wallet’s large user base and territorial coverage of 170 countries, as well as the company’s healthy growth in key metrics such as transaction volume. The post further suggests that this could result in new kinds of decentralized financial (DeFi) services, including banking, lending and peer-to-peer transactions that require no intermediaries.
This June, BRD partnered with blockchain payments and infrastructure firm Wyre to allow its United States-based customers to purchase cryptocurrencies using bank transfers. The new service is reportedly supported by over 1,700 U.S. banks, and ostensibly allows for purchases to register within five minutes.
Taking proactive investment approach
Xpring has made an array of notable investments in recent months, including a partnership with major cryptocurrency payment processor BitPay to let businesses accept XRP for payments via BitPay’s cross-border payments platform. As part of the cooperation, BitPay is also integrating its BitPay Wallet with Xpring’s developer platform.
In late September, Xpring onboarded Logos Network, a distributed ledger-based payment platform that focuses on speed and scalability. Logos will be exploring a DeFi system that is set to leverage XRP at its core.
In August, Xpring announced a 1 billion XRP (roughly $265 million) grant to web monetization platform Coil. The latter is reportedly supposed to utilize the funds to build an ecosystem of creators, developers, companies and nonprofits that use XRP through the Web Monetization open standard.