San Francisco-based fintech heavyweight Ripple has settled its lawsuit against GCC Exchange, operator of the GCC Remit money transfer app. This comes as Ripple’s ongoing legal showdown with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) heats up.
Ripple Reaches Settlement With GCC With No Fault Admitted
Ripple has successfully resolved its case with GCC, a global money transfer service provider.
Yash Rajesh, the Director of GCC Exchange, revealed in a recent interview that his company had entered into a confidential settlement with Ripple “with no admission of liability”. This means neither Ripple nor GCC admitted any wrongdoing.
Ripple lodged the lawsuit against GCC in July 2023. According to the suit, GCC allegedly failed to pay for the transfer of XRP liquidity made by Ripple Singapore. Ripple alleged that GCC Exchange failed to pay invoices for over 40,000 transfers of XRP “units”, worth roughly $15 million.
Ripple wanted the defendant to pay both the sum of the invoices and the soaring late fees. The suit was set to be heard before the High Court of Justice in England.
One Less Lawsuit To Worry About
In July 2023, Judge Analisa Torres in the SEC vs. Ripple lawsuit affirmed that the XRP token isn’t a security when sold on retail exchanges, but it is when sold to institutional customers.
The dispute between the two is ongoing, with the regulator earlier this month asking for an order to force Ripple to hand over its audited financial statements for 2022 and 2023 and disclose its contracts for XRP institutional sales since the suit was lodged.
Ripple’s legal team dismissed the request as invalid, arguing that the deadline had passed and the documents weren’t relevant to the upcoming April trial.
The SEC opposed in a Jan 23 letter, saying that Ripple “does not even claim that it would be prejudiced by producing its recent financial statements,” and mentioned a previous decision that:
“In calculating the size of a penalty necessary to deter misconduct, the extent of a defendant’s wealth is a relevant consideration.”
The outcome of the suit with the securities regulator could have significant implications for the XRP ecosystem, with market pundits suggesting that a favorable resolution could encourage high-profile investment managers to apply for spot XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) application with the SEC.
