Ripple announces that it has signed partnerships with 3 cryptocurrency exchanges: Bittrex, Coins.ph, and Bitso. The partnership focuses on the use of Ripple’s product, xRapid, that allows conversion of XRP tokens into fiat currencies and makes cross-border transactions seamless and quick.
According to Ripple’s press release, published August 16th, the company signed a partnership with 3 crypto exchanges. The main motive of this partnership is to improve their cross-border payments settlement product.
xRapid is Ripple’s blockchain-based, real-time gross settlement system which is basically used for transferring international fiat from one financial institution to another. The partners who have joined with Ripple are Bittrex (United States), Coins.ph (Philippines), and Bitso (Mexico). These cryptocurrency trading platforms will benefit from this partnership since a healthy ecosystem for exchanging cross-border payments is expanding.
Dig this: As of right now @BittrexExchange, @Bitso and @coinsph are now official partners for xRapid transactions using #XRP. What does it mean? 👉https://t.co/BIVhkpgCM2
— Cory Johnson ⚡️ (@CoryTV) August 16, 2018
How Will It Work?
These 3 new partners will allow the xRapid payment solution to convert XRP into U.S dollars, Mexican pesos, and Philippine pesos respectively. The process for sending money to Mexico from the U.S. via xRapid works in the following manner.
1) A financial institution in the U.S. that has a Bittrex account will initiate a payment to Mexico using xRapid.
2) The payment is converted from U.S. dollars into XRP on the Bittrex exchange.
3) The payment is then settled on the XRP ledger.
4) Bitso will convert the XRP into pesos on behalf of a Mexican bank.
5) The bank in Mexico will then pay the transaction’s recipient in pesos.
Cory Johnson, Chief Market Strategist at Ripple, notes:
Bittrex is one of the biggest names in digital asset trading in the U.S. The same goes for Bitso in Mexico and Coins.ph in the Philippines. That makes today’s announcement an important development for xRapid. We’ve seen several successful xRapid pilots already, and as we move the product from beta to production later this year, these exchange partners will allow us to provide financial institutions with the comfort and assurance that their payments will move seamlessly between different currencies.
The Benefits and the Doubts
Back in May 2018, financial institutions tested sending payments from the U.S. to Mexico, and it was reported that transaction costs were reduced by 40% to 70%. In addition, the transaction time was cut from 2 to 3 days to just a few minutes.
Ripple has been aggressive in building relationships with banking institutions across the world. They’ve entered the Middle Eastern market by working with Kuwait Finance House and are looking to enter the Chinese market. The Vice President of European Union Strategic Accounts at Ripple, Jeremy Light, has earlier said that China is definitely a country where interest in blockchain is huge.
Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, believes that the number of banks using XRP to make international payments will dramatically increase, saying:
I’ve publicly stated that by the end of this year I have every confidence that major banks will use xRapid as a liquidity tool. You know, by the end of next year, I would certainly hope that we would see you know in the order of… dozens.
Do you think these new partnerships will boost the use of XRP and xRapid? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of ShutterStock and Twitter/@CoryTV.