Ripple xRapid Goes Live

Ripple xRapid, a cross border payments product that minimizes liquidity costs have been released by Ripple and it is now commercially available. The announcement was made on Monday at Ripple’s annual two-day conference, Swell by CEO Brad Garlinghouse.

After months of development, xRapid is one of Ripple’s most rising products. Ripple xRapid will provide service and product that makes cross-border payments more efficient in terms of both cost and speed. It is commercially available and moving into production with various clients such as MercuryFX, Cuallix, and Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union.

About xRapid

xRapid removes the demand for a pre-capitalized Nostro account when performing a cross-border payment. It creates liquidity from XRP on exchanges all over the world. Due to this, cross-border transactions happen in minutes and at a lower cost compared to traditional solutions. Traditional methods take days to complete cross-border payment transactions and take high foreign exchange fees. This is the first time that XRP will be used in a commercial application by financial services firms.

Asheesh Birla, Ripple’s senior vice president of product, told CNBC

I’m really excited to bring the product into the market at a time when there is a lot of skepticism about digital assets and their real use case. Here’s something where we’re finding a ton of value and providing a ton of value to our customers using digital assets to move money more efficiently.

Earlier this year, the payment platforms MercuryFX and Cuallix both assisted in the pilot project of xRapid and observed immediate results in speed and cost savings. MercuryFX will implement xRapid in Europe to Mexico corridor. Cuallix will currently focus on the key remittance corridor from the U.S. to Mexico. It will also use its financial services platforms Payllix and Cuallet, to give a better client experience for people who send money home.

Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union, a financial institution that serves more than 1,400 member and client credit unions in the United States, will utilize xRapid for its members to create a new cross-border payment service.

Asheesh Birla further said

Banks worldwide are not first adopters of the xRapid product, but we are seeing a lot of financial institutions in general and payment providers moving forward with that product. We have a lot of business with payment providers. I think banks will move faster towards leveraging digital assets, and so it really depends on the regulation and the local market.

Ripple xRapid utilizes a digital asset, XRP, to give an on-demand liquidity, which helps to reduce costs while allowing real-time payments in emerging markets. Built for enterprise use, XRP gives banks and payment platforms a highly efficient, scalable, reliable liquidity option to service cross-border payments.

How Ripple xRapid Works?

A payment journey with xRapid looks like this:

A financial organization links directly to digital asset platforms in both the originating and destination corridors.
The originating currency is exchanged into XRP which gives the required liquidity to back the final payment, and then in seconds that XRP is exchanged into the destination currency in the second digital asset exchange.
After finishing this transaction, the funds will be sent out on the local rails of the destination country for payout. The transaction is tracked end-to-end, and the result is a cross-border payment that is cheaper and faster than ever before.

About Swell Conference

Swell conference, hosted by Ripple, connects the world’s leading experts on policy, payments, and technology. This year’s Swell conference is featuring:

Financial services companies using blockchain technology in production.
New market opportunity in remittances, e-commerce, and corporate marketplaces
Frameworks for regulating digital assets across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Swell is gathering various payments experts and industry giants to discuss trends, success stories of blockchain implementations and real-world blockchain use cases to meet changing customer demands for global payments.

Ripple’s price is currently at $0.554. Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped it from maintaining its position as the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The current market cap is $22.18 billion, trailing behind rival cryptocurrency ether’s $23.33 billion market cap. Its [24H] VOL is at $976.78M at the time of writing this article. The currency’s maximum supply is between 39.94 B – 39.37 B.

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