Banco Internacional del Peru, commonly known as Interbank, says it’s switching from Ripple’s payment messaging system xCurrent to the company’s XRP-powered payment product called On-Demand Liquidity (ODL).
Interbank’s blockchain specialist Joisie Mantilla made the announcement at Ripple’s Swell conference in Singapore.
“In Peru, we started thinking about cryptocurrencies when they first started appearing in the US. The bank has done a great job trying to attract talent that is really focused on innovation. And we have an innovation lab inside the bank.
So we work as a team that is allowed to fail and try different things, and we started working with xCurrent in that way. And now, after a year of working with xCurrent, we have decided to move forward this year and use the cryptocurrency to do our transactions.”
On-Demand Liquidity, formerly known as xRapid, is designed to use Ripple’s native cryptocurrency XRP as a bridge between two fiat currencies. Ripple says that since the product’s launch in October of 2018, 24 of its 300+ clients have signed up to use ODL.
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Mantilla says the company’s focus on new technologies is born out of necessity due to increasing innovation in Latin America’s cross-border payments infrastructure.
“The need that we have found is both our products of either corporate payments or just remittances are outdated. We’re not being competitive in the market anymore. There are so many fintechs, especially coming from Brazil or from the US itself that are targeting Peru as one of their next steps to flourish.”
Interbank is one of the largest banks in Peru, according to the Corporate Financial Institute (CFI).
The company reported $2.9 billion in total revenue in 2017, and $41.3 billion in total assets.
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