Following unconfirmed reports last week of a partnership with Western Union, Ripple has announced a deal to work with MoneyGram. While Ripple barely moved on the news, MGI stock exploded higher...

As a reminder, MGI recently tumbled after CFIUS rejected its acquisition plans with an Alibaba-backed Chinese banking affilate.

As Fortune reports, the partnership will see MoneyGram pilot the use of XRP through a new Ripple service, called xRapid, designed to provide liquidity to financial institutions. In a release announcing the news, the companies touted the speed and efficiency of XRP:

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. Similarly, the average transaction time for XRP is 2-3 seconds with other top digital assets ranging from 15 minutes to an hour.

In a statement, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse described the MoneyGram tie-up as a strategic one, and said it would demonstrate XRP's ability to lower costs for money transfers between friends and families.

"Every day blockchain technology is changing the norm and encouraging innovation. Ripple is at the forefront of blockchain technology and we look forward to piloting xRapid. We're hopeful it will increase efficiency and improve services to MoneyGram's customers," said CEO Alex Holmes in a statement.

For MoneyGram, the tie-up with Ripple may provide a way to maintain its share of the money transfer market. Like its longtime rival Western Union, MoneyGram has faced competition from a new generation of low-cost Internet-based services like TransferWise.

Ripple has about 100 banks, including UBS Group AG , Banco Santander S.A. and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria S.A. , signed on as customers, but has been working to sign up remittance companies like MoneyGram as well. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in a tweet earlier this month that three of the five largest money-transfer companies would begin using XRP this year.