The head of government and regulatory relations of APAC and Middle East at Ripple, Sagar Sarbhai, said that Ripple has made significant progress with its xRapid product. The blockchain startup will be launched next month. xRapid should speed up banking transactions using the XRP cryptocurrency.
The company has entered into transactions with various large financial institutions, including Santander, American Express, MoneyGram and Western Union. These partnerships, however, have been concluded as part of xRapid's tests. No other bank has started a full-scale testing of the product, although Ripple expresses confidence that by the end of 2019 there will be dozens of banks using xRapid.
Sarbhai said that more than 120 financial institutions are currently working with Ripple, using their blockchain product xCurrent. As part of the project, the distributed ledger is used as a database for the registration of transactions. xCurrent is commonly used to resolve international transactions. With the help of the platform, each stage of such payment is confirmed in real time.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
- xRapid uses XRP tokens as a link between currency pairs, which allows banks to process cross-border transfers more quickly.
- For example, a bank processes a transaction that was sent in one national currency and received in the other. With the advent of xRapid, this process will be accelerated by converting the fiat currency into XRP tokens. Only after the conversion money will go abroad, where they will be automatically transferred to the national currency of the receiving party.