Ripple to Expand to Dubai, Says CEO Brad Garlinghouse

Ripple, one of the most popular cryptocurrency firms, has announced its expansion in other countries. The company is all set to expand to Dubai, according to Chief Executive Officer Brad Garlinghouse.

Garlinghouse also disclosed the development at the Dubai Fintech Summit that is happening today and talked passionately about the customer base in the Middle East. According to him, the regulatory operations have made the country a good choice for setting up offices. Most importantly, he said that Dubai is rising to become the new international financial center for crypto innovation.

In the United States, things have not been very friendly for the popular crypto solutions firm. Ripple was caught up in a two-year legal conflict with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In addition to that, legal procedures have been in the media for a while regarding the security definition of virtual assets. This debate has played an important role in the regulatory perspective of the industry.

Ripple, which is a leader in enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions, is opening an office in the heart of Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and acquiring Swell Global 2023. Ripple has majorly looked at serving customers around the world with more than 90% of the firm’s clientele from outside the United States. Around fifty percent of Ripple’s Middle-East and North Africa (MENA) payment volume comprises cross-border payments like remittances from the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia to India.

In late 2021, Ripple announced the launch of its first-ever On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) deployment in the Middle East, with Pyypl, the international blockchain-based financial services technology firm in the Middle East and Africa. ODL was introduced to use virtual asset XRP and support instant and low-cost cross-border payments. With the help of ODL, financial enterprises, and small/medium-sized firms can utilize initially entrapped, pre-funded capital to develop and scale their companies.

The news of Ripple entering Dubai comes amid the company suffering a legal battle with SEC that cost it more than $200 million. Moreover, since regulation is yet to be figured out by the regulatory authorities in the United States, it is only fitting for firms to look for better and more habitable environments to develop as companies.

According to Navin Gupta, the Managing Director of South Asia & MENA, in a hyper-global connected world, the requirement for cross-border payments is on the rise, with around $156T worth of cross-border payment flows in 2022 alone. As Dubai is slowly becoming a region containing several significant remittance markets and corridors, the Middle East’s financial organizations are targeting making payments quicker, inexpensive, and more useful for the people who require it the most.