Key Takeaways
- The High Court of Malaya made absolute a charge over 100,465 Tranglo shares held by Seamless on Oct. 1.
- Currenc’s $400M Tranglo sale to New Margin had a Sept. 30, deadline and no disclosed closing.
- Ripple may seek a court-approved sale from Oct. 7, while Seamless can still contest valuation.
The Massive $23,952,480 Figure Explained
It is the unpaid principal Nasdaq-listed Currenc Group disclosed in an Oct. 7 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), before adding late fees and court costs.
The debt traces back to Ripple’s on-demand liquidity (ODL) service, which uses XRP as a bridge between two fiat currencies. According to the Singapore High Court judgment, GEA Limited, a Hong Kong remittance firm then owned by Seamless, signed an XRP purchase agreement and a $5 million line of credit with Ripple on Sept. 12, 2022.
GEA ran up four invoices, one in October 2022 and three in March 2023, and paid only $8,455,740 toward one of them. Ripple withdrew the ODL service on March 11, 2023, after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Two months later, Seamless founder Alexander Kong, Seamless, and Regal Planet signed a deed guaranteeing what GEA owed.
The defendants argued that an oral 2021 “Cooperation Agreement” barred Ripple from pulling ODL, describing a partnership in which “wide adoption of XRP would result in XRP’s price increasing.” Judge Valerie Thean was not persuaded and dismissed their appeal, while refusing to stay enforcement.
Winning in Singapore was only half the job, because the asset Ripple wanted sits in Malaysia. On April 17, Ripple Markets APAC registered the judgment there under the Reciprocal Enforcement of Judgments Act 1958, as the same filing shows. On Oct. 1, the High Court of Malaya made absolute a charging order over 100,465 shares of Tranglo Sdn. Bhd. owned by Seamless.
From Oct. 7, Ripple could start proceedings to force a sale. Seamless can still fight over the valuation, manner, and terms of any sale.
Ripple is not a stranger to this cap table as it already owns 40% of Tranglo, a stake it agreed to buy in 2021, and the judgment confirms Seamless holds the remaining 60%. The charged shares are that 60%.
$400 Million and a Deadline That Came and Went
Those same 100,465 shares were supposed to change hands this year, and on Jan. 2, Currenc announced a deal to sell them to New Margin Holding Limited for $400 million in cash, with half due at closing and half 90 days later. The agreement carried a hard stop, i.e. if closing conditions were not met by Sept. 30, 2026, it would “automatically terminate.”
Currenc has not disclosed a closing, and its Oct. 7 filing still describes the shares as owned by Seamless. Currenc’s full-year results put Tranglo’s total processing value at $5.6 billion for 2025, with remittance revenue up 22% to $22.2 million.
The parent company’s cash position looks tight given that on Sept. 20, Currenc signed a $1.5 million secured convertible bridge loan with Apex Innovation Global, again guaranteed by Kong. The loan requires prepayment from 100% of the net proceeds of any out-of-ordinary-course asset sale, and it matures early if Currenc completes its proposed acquisition of Animoca Brands.
Why Ripple Is Chasing $24 Million
The $24 million number may seem small next to Ripple’s recent run of deals, as over the past week alone, the firm deepened ties with Brevan Howard through Ripple Prime, signed a deal with Meritz Securities in Seoul and joined OKX’s new investors.
Amid this, the Tranglo case appears to be a signal that Ripple is willing to chase a former ODL partner’s guarantee across two jurisdictions.
