The Novatti Group Ltd (ASX: NOV) share price is soaring during mid-morning trade following an update on its Ripple partnership. At the time of writing, the digital banking and payments company's shares are up 5% to 52 cents.
What's driving the Novatti share price higher?
Novatti shares are firmly in the green as investors appear upbeat about the company's future prospects.
According to this morning's release, Novatti advised its recently signed partnership agreement with Ripple is now live.
Established in 2012, Ripple is a global payments company that provides real-time international funds transfer using blockchain technology. Ripple's network comprises more than 300 customers across 40 countries and 6 continents.
Both parties entered into a partnership in December last year, enabling Novatti customers to access Ripple's services.
Initially, the aim of the collaboration was to target cross-border transactions between Australia and the South East Asia region. However, with its main focus on the Philippines, Novatti united with remittance service provider, iRemit, through RippleNet.
iRemit is the Philippines's largest non-bank, engaged in providing fund transfer and remittance services to overseas-based Filipino workers.
The deal is expected to generate several thousand transactions each month being processed by Novatti. This in-turn will lead to increases in revenues and margins for the company.
Novatti noted that further discussions are currently underway to add new South East Asia clients to its service.
Management commentary
Novatti managing director, Peter Cook commented:
Forming our partnership with Ripple was part of Novatti's broader strategy to develop a banking and payments ecosystem that enables our existing platforms to scale quickly.
The early success of Novatti's partnership with Ripple also highlights the benefits of our broader overseas expansion since the start of this year, with new licences obtained for the New Zealand market and Emersion now up and running in the US. As shown through Ripple, this expansion opens Novatti up to new revenue opportunities, and provides us with greater exposure to the global demand for digital payments that we expect to accelerate going forward.
The Novatti share price is up close to 300% in the past 12 months.
