Global freelance marketplace goLance has no full-time employees but hiring freelancers through its platform. CEO Michael Brooks spends a lot of time traveling around the world meeting them along with other entrepreneurs who find work through the service. This gives him an extreme experience that is a unique insight into the needs of his customers and the importance of the quicker and lower payments Ripple has enabled.
For example, Brooks explained that when he landed the Philippines and meet these people (the freelancer) directly, he saw first-hand why freelancers are hyper-sensitive about the cost and time it takes to be paid. RippleNet’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) has the ability to make hyper-efficient, inexpensive payments that make the firm’s customers happy and drive growth for the business.
Having more than 500,000 freelancers on its platform, goLance officers have well-paid professional jobs and sustainable sources of income more accessible to talented people in the developing world. But to build up these new communities comes with challenges, especially the high costs and long processing times of traditional cross-border payment services.
Brooks said that their freelancers have a desire for hard work and delivering results for clients, but they also need to be paid on time in order to feed their families and send their kids to school. The arrangement of fast payments from one side of the world to another using numerous currencies is not a simple process.
The problem of traditional payments
As an author of two books on electronic payments and digital assets, Brooks understood blockchain’s transformative potential for cross-border payments, especially at the lower value amounts earned by freelance workers in places like Mexico and the Philippines. Transferring money to people faster with lower fees became a key business strategy for goLance.
Brooks explained that the traditional cross-border payment is a wire transfer that deliveries slowly from bank to bank with each one taking a cut. It takes days and with smaller amounts, the recipient ends up losing a huge percentage of their earnings. Develop relationships between banks in each country is also a considerable way but that’s complex, time-consuming and ties up liquidity.
It is notable that RippleNet had the ability to address both of these issues with traditional payments. While it takes at least 6 months to set up partnerships with banks, RippleNet’s GoLance joins in an existing global network of banks and other payment services to get new corridors up and running in just two weeks. Global payments can then happen in real-time and at a much lower cost, which is potentially life-changing for freelancers.
Brooks said that this is the livelihood of those freelancers, and the firm’s job is to make sure that people can buy groceries. That’s why the firm chose a stable, utility-based digital asset like XRP, while Bitcoin’s value is too volatile and the recipient has the extra step of converting it to their fiat currency. If there was a problem, they could not call Bitcoin but service provider Ripple. He has visited Ripple’s offices all over the world and work with their teams to make the payments experience faster and more efficient.
As GoLance extends its service into new markets, the ability to establish new payment corridors quickly and efficiently gives the company an edge in a highly competitive market. Customers are satisfied when receiving their well-earned payments quickly are rarely sharing their bad experiences, ensuring goLance’s continued growth.
The company has the ability to travel to parts of the world where there is a great opportunity for growth but are difficult in terms of payments. Ripple has made an effort to open up these challenging corridors so they can provide faster, cheaper payments that help freelancers raise their families, deliver for their clients and grow their businesses as we grow ours.
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