One of the things that the entire crypto market has been waiting for is the announcement by the US Securities and Exchange Commission that Bitcoin and Ethereum are commodities. For this reason, it means that Bitcoin and Ethereum should not be governed by the same rules and regulations as stocks.
Unfortunately, Ripple is in a limbo. Ripple is currently dealing with a third lawsuit with a claim that it is a security not to mention claims that Ripple manipulated the market’s price. But of course, Ripple is still something that deserves the attention of the crypto market. It has specialized mainly in cross-border payments.
According to Emi Yoshikawa, Director of Joint Venture Partnership at Ripple, she explained that Ripple is using tech that can help improve the fragmented infrastructure of payments. Using blockchain tech, Ripple hopes to provide solutions to this problem.
Ripple is currently collaborating with various banks in order to help reduce the friction in global payments. One of the more recent partnerships includes that with Kotak Mahindra which is an Indian private bank.
Instant Transfer
Ripple’s Interledger Protocol has been developed in order to send instant money transfer with minimal problem. It removes the need for a payer and a payee to set up their accounts. All that has to be done is to connect banks and financial services into the network. And by doing so, it helps reduce the friction that is usually encountered on global payments.
According to Emi Yoshikawa, she mentioned on TechCrunch Hangzhou Blockchain Side Stage that “Low value high volume use cases including remittances is an area that we’re focused on. Asia as the world’s center for remittance payments is a critical market for Ripple”. She also added that “Asia is the world’s center for remittance payments, there is a lot of money going into Asia and flowing out of Asia as well”.
Yoshikawa touched on the subject that the Interledger Protocol helps get rid of the risk of intermediary failures. And with this project, it hopes to connect banks and financial services to the network. Ripple makes use of what is described as a “highly-scalable digital asset”. It helps in reducing both costs and improve performance despite high volume transfers.
Yoshikawa also mentioned that Ripple helps in reducing the cost and also helps invents new opportunities in terms of creating new business opportunities not to mention providing better entrance to financial services. She said that “People tend to think that blockchain is a threat to existing financial services, but it’s not always the case. We are providing solutions to help banks become better, so they can provide better services to their customers”.
The Kotak Mahindara and Ripple partnership aimed to help to improve cross-border remittance. The bank makes use of settlement solution that is named xCurrent. What it does is decrease the time that is associated with remittance payments.
Ripple’s Future?
There are many issues that Ripple needs to address. Though they have established a name as the go-to cryptocurrency for a cross-border transaction, it is also worth mentioning that Western Union mentioned that Ripple wasn’t able to do anything beneficial for them. In addition to this, Ripple needs to settle the lawsuits in order to determine if it is really a commodity or a security.
