By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 18th, 2024
Ripple along with its partners are changing lives in the South Eastern Asian Nations. Some call it the best testing grounds for blockchain and cryptos, since a lot of people are working abroad and using remittance networks to support their loved ones.
Ripple has been a pioneer in this region to test these grounds for blockchain use. Ripple along with its partners at SBI Remit, CIMB Group, Siam Commercial Bank, Mitsubishi Corporation and Standard Chartered, the Japan Bank Consortium, and many others noticed the problem this region is facing.
Asian regions feature large, connected and itinerant populations across countries, but somehow they have the most expensive remittance network in the world. There are multiple problems that these people are facing each day within this system.
First of all, the people involved say that the exchange rate between the Japanese Yen and the Thai Baht is very high. Next, to actually start the remittance process, people have to visit the bank physically multiple times. The payment itself takes days and the most shocking thing is that to cover the fee for this transaction, people have to take extra 12 hours of work. That is insane. In the digital era.
Ripple Technology to Save the Day
According to Ripple, the company’s blockchain technology is already solving the problems of the Thailand-Japan remittance corridor.
Recently we reported that Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, in an interview to Bloomberg, revealed that Ripple technology is now being used by over 100 swift-enabled banks. Ripple’s main advantage is that it provides liquidity. But in comparison to SWIFT, Garlinghouse said that it’s far behind, in terms of technology:
“The technology used by the banks today that Swift developed years back hasn’t really evolved or even kept up with the current market.”
Today it looks like Ripple just wants to take over SWIFT. Brad Garlinghouse also spoke at the Swiss National Bank Conference, where he explained that today SWIFT about 6% of the total transactions are in the control of humans, making the system very costly to run and maintain.
The Ripple customer base, however, has been increasing rapidly. As Ripple explains, they are getting from 2 to 3 new customers a week. Although Ripple hasn’t yet commented on the total number of partners they have, last year the company revealed that they have around 200 partners using the Ripple technology plus, according to a new interview with Bobsguide, 14 new banks and financial institutions that have signed up for RippleNet in the past few weeks.
RippleNet not xRapid
As many XRP believers think this all is related to the XRP token – it’s not. These banks and partners are using only the RippleNet technology which helps them put the digital currency on the blockchain. It has nothing to do with XRP. These payments aren’t made with XRP. Also, their plan on taking over SWIFT does not include XRP being the main currency in that plan. So we guess it’s like the ever-old saying “Blockchain, not Bitcoin” but now it would be “Ripple, not XRP”.