By
Temitope Olatunji
April 23rd, 2024
The three exchanges will be using the Ripple’s xRapid solution for the easy transfer of money between the Mexican pesos, the U.S. Dollars, and the Phillippines pesos.
Although Ripple (XRP) has been having a tough time in the crypto market since the beginning of this year with its price dropping by more than 90%, it has not stopped the company from making some important inroads in the financial payments sector. Ripple Labs has been making important ties with banking institutions across the Europe, Asia and UAE markets. Moreover, many online payment services and gateways are also working on integrating Ripple’s low-cost instant payment solutions.
On Thursday, August 16, Ripple announced that it has teamed up with three cryptocurrency exchanges to give a further push to its xRapid cross-border payments settlement solution. In its official press release, Ripple notes that it has partnered with three different cryptocurrency exchanges – Mexican Bitso, U.S.-based Bittrex, and Phillippines-based Coins.ph for developing a “healthy” ecosystem of the digital currency exchange.
As a part of this collaboration, the three exchanges will be using the Ripple’s xRapid solution for the easy transfer of money between the Mexican pesos, the U.S. Dollars, and the Phillippines pesos. While explaining the operational working behind this, Ripple said:
“A financial institution (FI) that has an account with Bittrex would initiate a payment in U.S. dollars via xRapid, which instantly converts into XRP on Bittrex. The payment amount in XRP is settled over the XRP Ledger, then Bitso, through its Mexican peso liquidity pool, instantly converts the XRP into fiat, which is then settled into the destination bank account.”
xRapid is an XRP-based blockchain solution developed by Ripple for instant real-time gross settlement in order to facilitate the international fiat transfers between global financial institutions. Ripple Chief Market Strategist Cory Johnson said:
“We’ve seen several successful xRapid pilots already, and as we move the product from beta to production later this year, these exchange partners will allow us to provide financial institutions with the comfort and assurance that their payments will move seamlessly between different currencies.”
Jhonson notes that one of the major reasons to tie up with these three exchanges is that they provide a lot of liquidity to the XRP tokens, and this partnership will help escalate it further. He explained:
“The corridors we’re focused on [are] organic … we want to focus on busy corridors. We want to focus on places where there’s a very vibrant XRP marketplace, and we want to focus on places where we can have the most value.”
Ripple Eyes China For Further Expansion
Although China has remained averse to the crypto market since last one year, the company has been spearheading in blockchain technology holding the maximum number of patents in this space. Having ventured majorly in the South East Asian nations, Ripple is now eyeing on the Chinese market.
While talking to CNBC, Ripple’s vice president of EU strategic accounts, Jeremy Lights stated:
“China is definitely a country and region of interest.”
The benefit that Ripple holds compared to other crypto companies is that it has got other blockchain-based payment solutions that doesn’t involve the use of XRP tokens e.g. Ripple’s xCurrent solution. As a result, the company is also looking forward to isolating the Ripple brand from the XRP.
However, Ripple’s competition in the Chinese market won’t come that easy as there is some intense competition from the local players as well. Tencent, the parent company of China’s most popular messaging app WeChat, is working together with Shenzhen tax authorities for developing a country-wide blockchain-based payment solution.
However, Ripple can still create some space for itself as most of its payment solutions are designed towards facilitating international money transfers.