Ripple Continues to Spread Across Emerging Markets

Ripple, the payment network once likened to “Western Union using blockchain technology”, is continuing its international expansion with the addition of two banks and four payment providers to its roster, according to a company announcement.

The institutions in question come from India, Brazil, Canada, China and Singapore. They are:

Itaú Unibanco, Brazil’s largest private sector bank and Latin America’s biggest bank by market capitalization;
IndusInd, a private sector bank from India;
Zip Remit, a money transfer service based in Canada and with roots in East Africa;
Beetech, the only online exchange and remittance platform provider which has received approval from the Brazilian central bank;
LianLian International of China, a payment service which has also partnered with PayPal and Apple; and
InstaRem of Singapore, which boasts 20,000 customers collected over only 18 months.

Five new financial institutions have joined RippleNet and will use xCurrent or xVia to strengthen emerging markets access into India, Brazil and China. https://t.co/pjTAbXWbUR

— Ripple (@Ripple) February 21, 2018

InstaRem will be using a Ripple product called xRapids, which slots between payment providers and the banks that actually pay out to customers. Ripple explains the product on its website: “Because payments into emerging markets often require pre-funded local currency accounts around the world, liquidity costs are high. xRapid dramatically lowers the capital requirements for liquidity.”

Prajit Nanu, CEO of InstaReM, said: “Now, RippleNet members will be able to process a large number of payouts in Southeast Asian countries through InstaReM’s secure rails.”

Ripple is the third biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, and isn’t even designed to be a cryptocurrency. It is a payment network using blockchain technology, and its tokens (XRP) are used to power the transactions on the system. However its success has caused the value of XRP to become substantial.

Recently we have been reporting a lot on the system. It has been adopted by major companies like Santander, American Express, Bloomberg, and Moneygram.

A couple of weeks ago, UAE Exchange, a company that claims to control 6.75% of the $575 billion global remittance market, announced its own partnership with Ripple,

In addition to that, it was successfully tested by the Bank of England, although that hallowed institution won’t be adopting the new-fangled technology any time soon, and only two days ago we reported that Western Union itself has been experimenting with it too.