MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY–(Marketwired – Jun 12, 2014) – AstroPay, the largest cross-border payment services provider in Latin America, today launched Ripple LatAm, the region’s first licensed money service business to use Ripple for payment transactions. Through local Ripple gateways, Ripple LatAm connects Latin American businesses with their counterparts in Asia, Europe and North America for fast and affordable remittances, merchant payments, and more.

Ripple is an Internet protocol that enables financial institutions to securely transfer funds in any currency in real time. With Ripple LatAm, individual account holders, merchants, and bank partners can instantly and affordably process payments to and from Latin America. This contrasts with correspondent bank networks built on traditional payment infrastructure that requires reserves, high fees, and multiple days to settle transactions across borders.

“Ripple LatAm effectively opens the region for business, allowing for real-time B2B cross-border payments between markets in each partner’s currency of choice,” said Andres Bzurovski, founder of Ripple LatAm. “Now, a European-based business can send euros to be received as Brazilian Real by a business in Brazil within seconds and at a fraction of the cost.”

At launch, Ripple LatAm serves seven countries, including Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Uruguay. With the launch of the Ripple LatAm payments platform, software developers can now build new remittance networks and services on Ripple, offering payments to home countries across Latin America with competitive fees.

AstroPay is the largest cross-border payments services provider in Latin America with more than 600,000 customers in seven countries conducting 5,000 unique transactions per day. AstroPay will enable Ripple LatAm to connect the Ripple protocol with local retail bank networks in each of these markets.

“With AstroPay we understand the potential for payments but deal every day in its realities and limitations,” continued Bzurovski. “Ripple removes the barriers to true global commerce with instant and affordable preferred currency transactions between individuals, businesses and financial institutions.”

Ripple is an Internet protocol that enables financial institutions to securely transfer funds in any currency in real time. Banks, money transmitters and clearing houses can use Ripple as clearing and settlement technology to facilitate straight through processing and increase access to liquidity. Ripple was created as a global value web to enable the world to move and exchange value like information today. Developers of any size can easily build payment solutions on Ripple to accelerate the movement of money.

For more information about Ripple, please visit http://www.ripple.com.

About AstroPay

AstroPay is the fastest growing payment solution in Latin America. It provides guaranteed payment solutions to consumers and businesses, addressing issues like capital controls, payment rejections, local taxes, fraud and credit approval.

AstroPay, a UK company, operating in Latin America, covers all the major markets in the Latin American region, providing payment solutions in markets where most popular solutions are not available, or not functioning properly. AstroPay prides itself on ease of use: simple integration and operation for merchants, easy registration and usability for customers. AstroPay is already the payment method of choice for thousands of Latin American consumers.