Ripple has finally committed to its plans for expanding further south, this time targeting South America. The company chose the largest and the most populated country as it’s jumping point into the local economy.
Ripple has hired local experts, one of which stands out the most. Luiz Antonio Sacco has been chosen as the leading managing director of Ripple’s operations in the region, due to his affiliation with the fintech industry in the past.
However, it was soon found out that despite the press release today, Ripple had already employed Sacco as early as March 2019. So this idea has definitely been brewing for more than a year in the founders’ minds, and finally, it’s now materializing in front of our eyes.
Brazil may have been the ideal choice for Ripple as dozens of local financial entities and institutions are already well versed with the RippleNet platform and are using it as we speak.
Therefore, Ripple may not have to invest too much in its marketing operations due to already existing brand recognition in the region, however, there are more than enough customers to tap into within the country.
Ripple will also be exhibiting at the CIAB Febraban starting today till Thursday and will try to showcase its RippleNet platform as a payment network for other interested institutional customers. Luckily for Ripple, they possess more than enough local study cases to display in front of the potential partners.
It seems like Brazil will be the headquarters of Ripple’s South American chapter, as the company is gearing up for multiple hires in the country so that it could launch itself forward and start operations in neighboring countries such as Chile, Peru, and Argentina.
The only country that Ripple will find it hard to enter is probably Venezuela. Even if there wasn’t the existing aversion to anything but the local cryptocurrency Petro. The Venezuelan population would be hard to crack to break their Dash using habits.
Nevertheless, it’s a loss in only a fraction of the existing market in South America.
