Ripple’s global head of banking Marjan Delatinne says the company now has 20 clients utilizing its XRP-powered xRapid.
In a new interview with Global Trader Review, Delatinne highlights the use case for xRapid and the impact it could have on cross-border remittances, especially in countries where it’s slower and more expensive to move capital.
“xRapid went live last October, so it’s a very new product, but we have more than 20 financial institutions using it.
When talking with banks, we still have to ensure that they understand that using this product is not around keeping XRP on their balance sheets. That’s very important for the banks to understand because they would otherwise have to report that to the regulators.
So there is still a lot of education, but what is apparent with the regional banks and also the payment service providers is that they are hungry for change and for having a competitive edge. That’s really the driver: being able to source on-demand liquidity and providing a real-time experience in terms of cross-border payments. For some difficult corridors, for instance, the Mexican peso and Philippine peso, a transaction currently takes three to four days because the underlying process is still archaic.”
So far, 13 companies have publicly said they are using or plan to adopt xRapid. SendFriend and Euro Exim both made recent announcements. SendFriend will use xRapid to power cross-border remittances between the US and the Philippines, and Euro Exim Bank says it plans to use the technology to move money across 80 countries.
Ripple is actively working to open more payment corridors for xRapid after launching the product in Mexico and the Philippines. Ripple partner Mercury FX says it’s looking to expand its use of xRapid to Canada, the Middle East and eight additional countries.
As for whether Facebook’s digital asset Libra will compete with Ripple, Delatinne says the social media giant is bringing more credibility to the space. But in the long run, Delatinne says Facebook, which is facing significant blowback from regulators, is taking a different approach than Ripple.
“Of course at this stage Libra doesn’t exist. It’s just a whitepaper. But Facebook has started with a vision, and this vision will probably evolve over time, but what we see is that their approach is not necessarily that they are going to work with the financial system. They want to completely transform it and bring a completely different experience.
Our approach is different: we are working with the system, so we haven’t been disrupting only. We are happily working with the banks, the payment service providers and the regulators.”
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