By
Temitope Olatunji
April 26th, 2024
XRPL Labs, a startup backed by Ripple, wants to make the process of accepting XRP easier for merchants as a mainstream option. The company has designed a payments app that will act as the transition that they need as a point-of-sale system.
A prototype of the point-of-sale (PoS) system is up and running, and will be tested at an upcoming meetup in the Netherlands. The app is tentatively titled XRPay, although the name will likely change to avoid confusion with a competing platform with the same name.
The first prototype of the xrpay app!! Pay for your drinks and food at the meetup using #xrp with the xrptipbot or wirex #XRPCommunity @WietseWind @baltazar223 pic.twitter.com/l1HNkOJjhE
— Tristan van de Kamp (@ThisIsTRISS) March 28, 2019
According to XRPL Labs founder Wietse Wind, the company plans to launch the app on both Google Play and the App Store shortly.
Getting ready for $XRP payments for the Community Meetup next month (in Amersfoort, the Netherlands) 🎉 (App will be released for store owners in the App store and Play store soon 🍻) https://t.co/Mdskly311l
— WietseWind – 🛠 XUMM @ XRPL Labs (@WietseWind) March 28, 2019
Even though San Francisco-based company aims to bring XRP closer to its actual users, so far, they have been offering their products to banks around the world, which accepted the partnership in massive numbers. However, this did not bring Ripple and XRP close to actual investors and users.
XRPL Labs hopes to change this, and it is not the only Ripple-backed startup that is doing on solutions that will allow XRP to enter the mainstream. Even so, it appears that XRP does plan to reach mass adoption through e-commerce.
XRP Trading Likely to Skyrocket
Now that XRP has become a valid payment option on thousands of stores, XRP trading is likely to skyrocket. A similar positive change might also reach XRP price, which has been struggling to grow in the past month. At the time of writing, the coin’s price sits at $0.311664, after a 0.73% growth in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, its online trading seems to be somewhat lower at the moment, with a trading volume of only $673 million.
However, one of the biggest blows to Ripple and XRP was the release of the JPM Coin by JPMorgan. This was followed by the news of IBM providing Ripple-like services for major banks in the United States. On the other hand, the XRP price prediction 2019 still stands a chance thanks to xRapid. Ripple’s xRapid, a payment protocol that users XRP as liquidity, has gained a lot of recognition in recent time.
A few days ago, the World Bank posted that xRapid by Ripple and Circle Pay by Circle have pushed traditional payment service providers to explore DLT technology. This recognition from the World Bank is a big deal. However, it still doesn’t reduce the competition for Ripple. If anything, more banks would be forced to start building DLT based systems instead of partnering with Ripple.
The World Bank report draws attention to the several Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), including Ripple’s xRapid technology – for which several institutions have run pilot programs – and Circle’s Pay service.
It then refers to Ripple’s pilot program for the US-Mexico corridors. Ripple concluded that there was a savings of 40 – 70% in this particular pilot, with payments taking only a few minutes, as opposed to a few days when executed to a foreign exchange broker. Mercury FX, which uses xRapid, reports that over $1.8 billion worth of remittances has been executed through Ripple.
Acknowledging that there is much to be gained from DLTs, the report says:
“DLT-based cross-border payments potentially offer a promising pathway to dramatic improvements in the lives of millions of people in emerging economies. DLT could improve the traceability of remittances and reduce compliance costs for MTOs and supply chain payments, stimulating economic activity in destination countries.”
There are challenges, of course, and the authors state that regulation across multiple jurisdictions and competing technologies, like SWIFT and its improvements, may serve as obstacles for DLT-based cross-border payments.
Ripple CEO in Talks With PayPal CEO, TechCrunch Pushing For XRP Adoption
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and PayPal CEO Dan Schulman met at the Fintech Ideal Festival in San Francisco. The PayPal CEO who is known to have slammed crypto a while ago, calling the digital assets an ineffective form of money.
Ripple CEO told him that banks and financial institutions are overdue for a major infrastructure overhaul.
Also, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is pushing mainstream trading platform Robinhood Crypto to add XRP. The platform says that it plans toad more coins in the future, but it has not revealed which ones. Now, it only supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic and Dogecoin.
As expected, the community’s feedback was positive, and people agree that XRP should be added on the platform.
To learn more about XRP coin, Ripple Labs company and their innovative solutions, please check out our awesome “What is Ripple?” guide.