Visa is acquiring Earthport, which has a working relationship with Ripple.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/visa-to-purchase-ripple-cross-border-payments-partner-earthport
Visa To Purchase Ripple Cross-Border Payments Partner Earthport
American payment services giant Visa Inc. is acquiring Ripple partner Earthport Plc, a payment network for cross border transactions, Reuters U.K. reported Dec. 27.
Founded in 1997, London-based Earthport is a financial services firm that offers cross-border payments service to banks and financial institutions.
Earthport is a partner of tech company Ripple, where the partnership is aimed at integrating the Ripple protocol into the firm’s existing payment network to improve international transactions.
Per Reuters, the acquisition will be made for £198 million, or 30 pence per each Earthport share, which exceeds the stock’s Monday closing price of 7.45 pence by over four times.
In 2016, Earthport launched a single application programming interface designed to connect banks to Ripple’s distributed ledger protocol when processing cross-border payments, according to financial and business news outlet Finextra.
In October, Cointelegraph reported that Visa was readying its blockchain-based digital identity system “Visa B2B Connect” for cross-border payments for launch in the first quarter of 2019.