By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 18th, 2024
During the first day of WEF 2020 at Davos, the U.S. Treasury Secretary acknowledged the demand for faster cross-border payment solutions and said that the U.S. will support companies like Ripple offering such services.
Ripple Labs is currently involved in a serious legal battle, as we have already reported. However, it doesn’t prevent the company from being rather positive about its future. And there are some grounds for it.
The World Economic Forum 2020 kicked-off yesterday, January 21, in Davos, Switzerland. As expected, global leaders met during the first day of the event with the U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaking on the transformation of the payments industry.
Muchin said that the U.S. Government is well aware of the new developments in the market. Besides, he also added that the government will welcome companies offering cross-border payment services for retail and business. The Treasury Secretary said:
“There are benefits to cross-border payment systems in lowering costs for consumers and businesses. We absolutely support companies working on this.”
Mnuchin’s words quickly resonated with some of the crypto industry experts and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse was quick to jump on it. Thus, Garlinghouse retweeted Mnuchin’s statement showing optimism that Ripple can facilitate the demand of the payments industry.
.@stevenmnuchin1 at #WEF20 when asked about cryptocurrencies: "There are benefits to cross-border payment systems in lowering costs for consumers and businesses. We absolutely support companies working on this." Critical to apply this pragmatism to US regulation. pic.twitter.com/93e84qQW1s
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) January 21, 2020
Note that blockchain startup Ripple has been working over the last few years to streamline the cross-border payments. Besides, the company has got different blockchain-based payment solutions under its belt. Ripple’s xCurrent solution leverages its blockchain to facilitate instant cross-border payments at a very low cost.
Some of the big money-transfer companies like Western Union and MoneyGram have pledged to use Ripple’s blockchain solutions. Additionally, Ripple has another solution dubbed ODL which uses the cryptocurrency XRP for instant payment settlements.
Note that Mnuchin has not mentioned Ripple explicitly during his address at the event. Rather, Garlinghouse is assuming that after Mnuchin’s statements, the U.S. government can accommodate Ripple for the country’s next payments revolution.
Mncuhin only took the name of MoneyGram as an example. Off lately, several banking giants have also been working aggressively in adopting the next-generation payments technology and transforming its systems.
Ripple Signs New Partners but a Long Road Ahead
Last year in 2019, Ripple had claimed that it has on-boarded 300 new partners to its platform. This includes some of the new banks and also some banking giants like the Spain-based Banco Santander.
While Ripple continues to penetrate the payments market, the company has been under scrutiny. Ripple has been accused by a few XRP investors for not selling their XRP tokens as registered securities during its IPO 2013. The blockchain startup has been fighting these claims since long and is currently under regulatory observation.
While things continue to function normally at the company, the XRP has also been a big disappointment for investors. While almost all of the top-ten cryptocurrencies saw their price surging during 2019’s partial market recovery, XRP gave negative returns.
Over the last year, XRP price has crashed more than 20%. At press time, XRP is trading at $0.23 with a market cap of $10.3 billion. However, it still continues to be the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.