Ripple has been boosting the XRP ecosystem for a really long time now.

Ripple invested in blockchain and crypto-related firms via the fundraising Xpring at a really rapid rate.

Half a billion dollars in investments

The company reportedly crossed half a billion dollars in investments, as reported by the Daily Hodl.

You may recall that Ripple created Xpring back in the May of 2018 and the primary mission was to provide investments and grants to entrepreneurs who are using the XRP coin and the XRP ledger as well.

“As a major contributor to the XRP Ledger codebase and large holder of XRP, we often hear from entrepreneurs and developers that they’d like support in one form or another to help them with their XRP-related projects. As one of the few blockchain companies with traction for a non-speculative use case, we feel we’re uniquely positioned to support entrepreneurs in a meaningful way.”

The same online publication mentioned above notes that Xpring has recently created a $100-million fund with the blockchain gaming company Forte and this will be used to bring cryptos such as XRP to the mainstream video games with massive numbers of active users.

Western Union is exploring Ripple

In other news, Western Union has been eyeing Ripple and exploring its services for cross-border payments.

During a discussion about the future of mobile payments hosted by Fortune, Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek said that the global money transfer service has finished testing Ripple’s solutions for cross-border payments. He also said that they want to explore Ripple further.

“We did a test with Ripple, and we are still doing it. It’s still ongoing. We are looking at it, and we are learning from Ripple… We are in a different position than MoneyGram. We have our own settlement system which is extremely cost-efficient.”