The price of Ripple has sharply increased by 29% after the company announced a partnership with one of the largest payment operators MoneGram.

MoneyGram will use Ripple tokens to conduct cross-border payments and reduce the costs of operations, it said in a statement.

"MoneyGram will pilot the use of XRP, the native digital asset of the XRP Ledger, in payment flows through xRapid, Ripple's solution for on-demand liquidity," the statement reads.

MoneyGram also mentions low transaction fees in the Ripple blockchain, comparing it to the bitcoin network.

"XRP remains the most efficient digital asset for payments with transaction fees at just fractions of a penny, compared to Bitcoin fees of about $30 per transaction."

Thanks to cooperation with Ripple, MoneyGram customers will be able to make and monitor their transactions in real time.

"We're hopeful it will increase efficiency and improve services to MoneyGram's customers," said Alex Holmes, Chief Executive Officer of MoneyGram.

Immediately after the publication of the statement, the Ripple price began to grow rapidly. If at 14.19 UTC, the currency was trading at $1.74, then after half an hour it went up to $2.25.

The main markets for Ripple are the South Korean crypto-exchanges. Bithumb, COinone and Korbit account for 33%, 11% and 6%, respectively, of the global trading volume of this altcoin.