Payment industry giant SWIFT’s (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) spokesperson clearly put an end to the rumors, which suggested a partnership with Ripple in an interview with Finance Magnates.
“I’m not sure where those rumors are coming from but the upcoming standards release … is entirely unrelated to RippleNet. Its primary purpose is to ensure all payments include a tracking reference (UETR, Unique End-to-end Transaction Reference) which will allow banks to track their GPI payments end-to-end in real time,” he said.
Currently SWIFT is upgrading its protocols to a new platform called SWIFT GPI. This upgrade also heated up such rumors, claiming a possible integration of RippleNet and xRapid payment solution based on XRP cryptocurrency into the SWIFT system, which would make them available to 4,000 banks worldwide.
Additionally, the participation of Ripple in a recent SWIFT Sibos conference in Sydney was also perceived as an argument in favor of the above version.
Ripple represents a threat to the global payment industry according to SWIFT and its partners such as MoneyGram, Mercury FX, Western Union, and Currencies Direct.
SWIFT’s response to that threat is to upgrade its system which will be utilized for 40% of the U.S.-China transactions by 165 banks.
On the other hand, SEB (Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB) Head of Transactions, Paula da Silva said that now all their customers are doing inter-company transfers between the U.S. and Sweden on Ripple platform.
“We have a couple of billion going through that,” she said.
However, XRP has experienced a rise amid the latest wave of rumors and even for a short time, it became the second largest cryptocurrency, surpassing Ethereum in terms of capitalization.
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