By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 18th, 2024
Without loud announcements, Bank of America has conducted testing of Ripple’s distributed ledger technology. And it may seem that it won’t stop at this stage.
Bank of America, one of the most prominent banks in the United States, has taken a bold step by adopting Blockchain technology after testing out Ripple’s Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in its banking system and appears to be ready to go a bit further with the implementation of the technology.
Bank of America’s commitment to Ripple might just stir the storm for other banks too. This development of the course has been in process for a long while and is by no means sudden. Last year in November, we reported that rumors were circulating of a mutual agreement between Ripple and Bank of America. Recent developments have, however, confirmed that Bank of America might be the latest big fish to join the list of banks using Ripple’s flagship product.
Ripple’s xRapid product has been created solely for financial institutions to reduce liquidity and introduce ease into cross border payments. As of the time of writing, Ripple now has more than 200 financial institutions as customers. With banks such as Euro Exim Bank and TAS group—which is the first to publicly adopt Ripple’s payment system as of 2013—on their list as well.
Bank of America’s interest or partnership is not as explicit yet, however, but it is now apparent that there is more to the story than hushed rumors.
‘B of A,’ the Customer Behind the Scenes
Ripple spokesperson would not announce explicitly that Bank of America is now the latest institution using Ripple’s choice product, but they did give enough clue. After Ripple claimed a certain B of A as a ‘customer’ during a seminar presentation as earlier reported last year, Ripple’s spokesperson today refused to confirm whether Bank of America was in partnership with Ripple.
Instead, they had this to say:
“Bank of America has been part of Ripple’s Global Payment Steering Group since 2016, and we did a pilot with them.”
The admission is no secret, but it is becoming clear that Bank of America is more than an adviser on Steering Group and could be on the verge of officially using one of Ripple’s flagship products, xCurrent.
Understandably, Bank of America would be silent about its involvement with Ripple’s products, given its history of hard stance on blockchain-related services. What’s more? Bank of America’s job posting in search of a “Ripple project product manager” is undoubtedly the best indicator of the bank’s new ambitions.
As of the time of writing, xCurrent looks to be the only Ripple product known to have been tested by Bank of America. However, current does not include XRP which is used in another Ripple’s product called xRapid.