MoneyMatch conducts live cross-border deal on blockchain

KUALA LUMPUR: Fintech startup company MoneyMatch has successfully conducted the first-ever live cross-border transaction from Malaysia on the blockchain.

To date, MoneyMatch remains the only live operating fintech with electronic know-your-customer, or eKYC, functionality in Malaysia.

Once users are onboarded successfully they can proceed to transfer money overseas at significantly cheaper rates and faster disbursement times.

For this cross-border transaction via the blockchain, MoneyMatch worked together with Ripple in San Francisco and over the past several months has been working closely with Ripple engineering team to integrate into the RippleNet xVia platform via an application programming interface.

“We’re really proud to make this announcement as we show clear evidence that a fintech startup, made wholly in Malaysia by young Malaysians, is capable of integrating into the Ripple blockchain and performing a live legitimate international money transfer from Malaysia to Europe, bringing blockchain innovation to the traditional Malaysian financial services industry,” said MoneyMatch chief executive officer Adrian Yap.

MoneyMatch is approved by Bank Negara Malaysia under FinTech Sandbox.

For this payment, the firm helped a retail user convert ringgit to euro at a significantly lower cost than a bank’s traditional telegraphic transfer.

Further, the technology was able to successfully process the transaction within just several hours via the blockchain compared with the traditional Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication network used by the banks, which would take a minimum of two days, and often times longer.

This first live blockchain international transaction went from Malaysia to Spain, and after that live cross-border payments were conducted on the blockchain out to Germany, Latvia and Ireland.