Ripple managed to raise $200 million in Series C funding that was led by Tetragon, SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures.
Ripple is ending this year in high class. The company announced on Friday it managed to raise $200 million in Series C funding. This investment presents the last stone in a road marking this the record “Ripple year” regarding its business. It also proves the blockchain technology’s worth in improving global payments and the higher advantage when it comes to the digital asset XRP and the XRP Ledger.
As per the official announcement, the Series C was led by the investment company Tetragon and the partial involvement of SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures. All of these investors affirm Ripple’s long-term potential. However, as equal partners, they provide a crucial perception of the industry and also the expertise in order to help Ripple’s business grow on a global scale.
Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse said:
“We are in a strong financial position to execute against our vision. As others in the blockchain space have slowed their growth or even shut down, we have accelerated our momentum and industry leadership throughout 2019.”
This was indeed the Ripple Year, especially considering its growth. The company’s global payments network RippleNet increased to more than 300 customers worldwide including a new strategic partnership with MoneyGram. The customers are in more than 45 countries of the world and on all 6 continents, with payout capabilities in over 70 countries included. According to the statement, this network momentum led to 10x year-over-year growth in transactions inside the network and more banks and financial institutions using XRP to source liquidity on-demand than ever before.
Xpring’s New Phase to Start
But, that’s not all. As part of its Ripple year, the company also announced the next phase for Xpring, its open developer money platform. The platform offers instruments, resources and programs that ease the procedure of money sending and payments receiving for developers. Payments can be sent and received in any currency, across any network, with the help of the XRP Ledger and Interledger Protocol (ILP).
Finally, this investment will accelerate the company’s eventual employing of new global talent in order to please market demands. Also it will optimize the business in order to better serve its growing community of customers and partners.
The company says that Ripple’s Series C is just one “moment along the company’s journey to change the way the world moves money.”
For what it’s worth, this investment supports Ripple’s wider vision for the Internet of Value (IoV) to make it possible for the world to move value like information moves today – “a global problem, with far-reaching implications.”
However, even though XRP seems to be more efficient than traditional methods (like wire transfers) of moving money across borders, there are skeptics who tend to question the Ripple’s role in the future.
With China planning its own a digital version of yuan, central banks in Canada, England, and elsewhere also experimenting with digital versions of their own currencies, it is hard to presume. Also, Facebook seems not to stop with its ambitious plans to use blockchain and banks like JPMorgan are also launching stablecoins pegged to the dollar.
Still, Garlinghouse says he’s not worried. He says central bank experiments are focused on domestic currencies and not moving money across borders.
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