By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 24th, 2024
It has been recently confirmed that Vietnamese TPBank is a new member that has taken a decision to join RippleNet.
Ripple Labs Inc. has already started making inroads in the financial space in Asia as sources indicate that TPBank based in Vietnam is the first financial institution in the country to join the blockchain payments network. RippleNet allows international remittances to take place in mere minutes rather than in days unlike traditional networks such as SWIFT and at much less cost as well.
This was stated on the bank’s website which indicated the bank’s first foray into blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. This was implemented by Ripple Labs Asian subsidiary SBI Ripple which is a joint venture between SBI Holdings and Ripple Labs Inc. This comes after the CEO of TPBank had indicated the Bank’s interest in Blockchain technology in an interview earlier this year in August.
Ripple Labs had already earlier integrated Xcurrent which is its messaging platform and Xrapid which provides liquid offerings to financial institutions to its mainnet RippleNet to increase the effectiveness of asset transfers on its blockchain.
TP Bank which stands for Tien Phong Commercial Joint Stock Bank is one of the tier one banks in Vietnam with assets of over $5.3 billion. TPbank aims to improve its current remittance offerings via blockchain technology first in Vietnam and then to other countries within Southeast Asia to countries such as Japan, the Philippines and even as far as South Korea.
Ripple has been very busy this year and has brought the number of partners on the RippleNet to over 200 as of today. In the past two months alone, Ripple has partnered with Faysal Bank on blockchain payments, gone through with the acquisition of Logos which is a fintech payments startup, and partnered with fintech giant Finastra among others.
While many other cryptocurrency startups have been met with skepticism from the broader financial community, Ripple Labs Inc, seems to have been one of the few darlings of the international financial community. This though doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been met with competition from various quarters, the growth of the blockchain startup and the linkages that it has developed suggests broader cooperation than was initially thought possible earlier this year.
With its annual Swell event taking place later this week in the nation city-state of Singapore, many expect that new offerings and products are going to be unveiled. It is said that the annual event will see a cross-section of some of the biggest names in the world of international banking and finance according to the events’ agenda and speakers.
This has also indicated that the broader adoption of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency tokens is also afoot with greater inclusion of the nascent field of decentralized finance.
At the time of writing, XRP that is utilized in RippleNet stood at $0.3 indicating a 2.96% rise in the past 24 hours.