Coinbase Says You Can Send XRP and USDC to Any Other Coinbase User for Free

[Pegasus]

According to an announcement on the Coinbase website, you can send "money" via XRP and USD Coin (USDC) instantly and free of charge to any other Coinbase user "in any supported country, including India, Mexico, and the Philippines."

Coinbase says that this feature, which apparently has been quietly available since Feb 28th (which is when XRP got listed on Coinbase.com) according to a Coinbase spokesperson who emailed Coindesk, this feature should not be considered a "money remittance" service since recipients need to perform their own conversions to local currency after receiving crypto (which means that in those countries "where Coinbase does not support the local currency," they will have to "transfer their XRP/USDC to an exchange that supports exchanges from XRP/USDC to local currency").

Coinbase also wants you to keep in mind that you will be charged network fees "on transfers to non-Coinbase accounts." And, of course, "purchases and sales of XRP are subject to a Coinbase fee."

Coinbase considers XRP and USDC "optimized for cross-border transmission" and uses the following table to illustrate the benefits of using XRP and/or USDC for this purpose over doing bank transfers:

In case you are wondering, although you can send other cryptocurrencies that are supported by Coinbase to "another Coinbase user or to an account outside of Coinbase," such transfers will be subject to the usual "nominal" on-chain network fees.

Source