Three of the top five money transfer companies in the world will be implementing the Ripple token into their payment systems this year, the company announced in a tweet on Thursday.

The tweet, which does not list partners, comes as its coin rallied to overtake Ethereum No. 2 in market cap, while Ripple has been criticized for being fair and sometimes opaque about the token.

Part of the criticism stems from the fact that Ripple has recruited over 100 financial institutions to use its xCurrent product, a messaging platform that does not use its coin, and many new investors mistake this for those institutions supporting its coin. Until Thursday, only one enterprise, Mexican financial company Cuallix, announced the use of its coin for cross-border money transfers.

But a company tweet and comments for CoinDesk from Ashish Birla, VP of Products at Ripple, earlier this week suggest more will be added this year. In another tweet late Thursday evening, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse responded to a New York Times article questioning the use of his coin by sharing comments he said were from banks and payment processors that had researched or tested the cryptocurrency.

Referring to Ripple's xRapid product, which puts his coin on top of the xCurrent messaging platform, Garlinghouse wrote: “Over the past few months I have been talking to real banks and payment providers. They do plan to use xRapid (our liquidity product of his coin) seriously.”

Despite a recent rise to almost $4 per coin, its coin has declined on this day following Coinbase's announcement that it currently has no plans to list the cryptocurrency (or any other new ones) on either its flagship exchange or its GDAX platform.