The market cap of Ripple surged by 33% today, after securing US$55 million from banks and major financial establishments.
Ripple, a blockchain-based global settlement network for banks and financial institutions worldwide, is a distributed system built for enterprise-grade financial networks for lowering the costs of international payments and instantaneous settlement.
The Google-backed company, which has raised several funding rounds from Standard Chartered, Accenture Ventures, and Siam Commercial Bank, is preparing an international expansion with its newly secured round of funding.
Ripple chief executive Chris Larsen stated that the majority of the funding will be utilized in securing local banking partners and hiring experienced engineers to build more efficient networks and systems for the settlement of money.
A part of the expansion would include the establishment of new office in Singapore and Frankfurt, two regions that have rapidly growing fintech industries and major banks interested in the implementation of the blockchain technology.
“We have been expanding our office locations. We want to continue that and grow those teams, we want to be hiring so we can have engineers on the ground with local banking partners as you have to get in there with the banks to make sure you have a complete solution and make things as easy as possible,” Larsen said in an interview.
Currently, the technology and financial network of Ripple is capable of processing the high daily trading volumes of banks. In addition to its scalability, it can process bank payments in a few seconds, with 33% reduction in operating costs.
The efficiency of the Ripple financial network secured the company 15 of the largest banks in the world, including UBS and Santander.
“We do think there will be opportunities especially with the change of tone of what’s getting funded and not. There will be really good companies that can’t get to the next round and might be better for them to be bought out. We will look at opportunities about what we can integrate with our business,” Larsen said.
Despite the active development of the Ripple technology, it is still unsure whether banks will adopt the blockchain technology and integrate it as its core technology. With it, banks will have to drop most of its existing internal IT infrastructure, which may take years and millions of dollars.