BBVA Completes First Cross-border Transfer Using Ripple Technology

It looks as if the Ripple ecosystem has gotten even more recognition recently. SAP For banking recently tweeted about BBVA is completing its first cross-border payment. This payment was made using Ripple’s blockchain technology. It is a major validation for Ripple’s technology, to say the least. It will be quite interesting to see how things evolve moving forward.

For the longest time, people have been wondering what BBVA would do. More specifically, the bank has shown a keen interest in blockchain technology for quite some time. It was believed the company was working on a proprietary solution. That does not appear to be the case after all. Instead, they just completed a cross-border payment using Ripple’s technology. This is a major validation for the Ripple team, to say the least.

BBVA Goes All-in on Ripple Technology

Contrary to popular belief, BBVA is not using Hyperledger. Nor are they using R3’s project, either. This latter part is not surprising, considering R3 never intended to use blockchain technology in any case. All they did was share the illusion of doing so. Hyperledger has been quite a popular blockchain solution among financial institutions as well. However, Ripple seems to check all of the right boxes for BBVA, use his not all that surprising.

.@BBVA completes its 1st cross-border payment using blockchain technology of @Ripple + new banking system https://t.co/0iyt6Wr9au pic.twitter.com/Nj6QhWCgot

— SAP for Banking (@SAPforBanking) June 19, 2017

The bigger question is whether or not BBVA will use the XRP asset as well. Any bank in the world can embrace Ripple technology without using the native token. To make payments faster and cheaper, using XRP is certainly worth considering, though. Having BBVA on board with Ripple is major exposure for the blockchain project. It is evident some people will continue to doubt Ripple, whereas others are more than happy to embrace this concept.

It is interesting to note this project has been in the works since April of this year. It has taken a while to implement the proper technology, by the look of things. Moreover, it appears BBVA has sued Ripple in combination with their own “new banking system”. It is unclear what this latter part means, though. It will be interesting to see if this news has any impact on the XRP price moving forward.

Header image courtesy of Shutterstock