Ripple-Backed XRPL Labs Reveals New Details on XRP-Based Banking App

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The head of XRPL Labs, Wietse Wind, is revealing new details on the company’s XRP-based banking app.

Wind is developing an app called Xumm that’s designed to allow users to hold and spend euros, dollars, XRP and other currencies without any help from a financial institution.

When pressed on Twitter for an update on the project, Wind said the company is about to launch a private developer-only beta version of the app. He also unveiled a new “secret” format for addresses – a feature designed to make it easy for users to access their crypto without using complex strings of numbers and letters.

“The common formats for XRPL account secrets are (at the time of writing this, July 2019):

• Family Seed, eg. sh1HiK7SwjS1VxFdXi7qeMHRedrYX
• Mnemonic, eg. car banana apple road …

These formats are prone to typos and not that user-friendly. Using numbers means it’s language (spoken, written) agnostic as well. They may be especially intimidating for the public that’s relatively new to cryptocurrencies/blockchain technology.”

Private beta for other devs (limited app functionality, but working signing requests + signing) is close 🍻 Oh, and XUMM will support mnemonics, family seed (s…..) and a new secret format: https://t.co/iMgBHFjVWU

— Wietse Wind { 𝚡𝚛𝚙𝚕𝙳𝚎𝚟: 𝚝𝚛𝚞𝚎 } (@WietseWind) August 12, 2019

Wind says his overall goal is to make the app so seamless and intuitive that his mother can use it.

“It’s not for geeks. We know that crypto wallets are for geeks and then somewhere near the bull run at end of 2017, suddenly 10% of the population here had a crypto wallet or multiple crypto wallets on their apps. It was still a few percent of the population, and most of them were geeks.

We’re building something that my mother could use and maybe even would want to use… We’re going to help users get started with a really secure, user-friendly set-up guide in-app. And there’s no way you can, pardon my French, fuck this up. There’s no way. We’re gonna make it really easy.”

Wind noted last month that the project is working to obtain a banking license to ensure it can transfer crypto-to-fiat while remaining regulatory-compliant.