Crypto firm Ripple Labs Inc. Is planning to take a 40% stake in Asian cross-border payments specialist Tranglo.

Ripple made a statement Tuesday that the tie-up will help meet demand for the use of its affiliated token XRP in transactions. The announcement comes about a week after Brooks Entwistle, a former executive at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc., became Ripple’s managing director of Southeast Asia.

Entwistle stated in an interview that Ripple is expanding into new markets in the region to meet “demand for cheaper, faster and more reliable cross-border payments with the use of Crypto."

Tranglo is based in Malaysia and has processed over 20 million transactions totaling $4 billion in value since its inception, Ripple added.

Ripple and some of its top executives are being sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly misleading investors in XRP by selling more than $1 billion of the virtual tokens without enlisting with the agency. The company is continuing its discussions with the regulators, Entwistle stated.