A division of PNC Bank – a top ten lender in the United States with over $400 billion in assets – has officially joined RippleNet, which is similar to Swift, to tap its increasingly popular Blockchain solution for cross-border Payments and settlement.
PNC Treasury Management will use technology built by startup Ripple to process international payments, the companies said on Friday, another strong indication to the use of blockchain in mainstream finance.
Ripple is developing several blockchain-based solutions that enable cross-border money transactions between banks in a faster and cheaper way than the current systems allow.
As noted by Ripple, PNC Bank serves over eight million customers and has retail branches in 19 states, which helps the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization to enhance its position within the US banking sector. However, today’s agreement with the PNC Bank means things are shifting into a higher gear.
The value of Ripple’s cryptocurrency, however, has failed to react to the growing acceptance of products developed by the California-based blockchain specialist.
Big Guns embraces Blockchain
Ripple was in the news recently after it announced a $30 million investment in global money transfer company MoneyGram. The move is significant because the arrangement also involves a partnership to use of XRP, Ripple’s digital currency, as part of MoneyGram’s cross-border payment process.
MoneyGram was among major money transferrers that have been testing Ripple as well as XRP for payments. Western Union was also trying out Ripple’s blockchain-enabled cross-border payments, though the company’s executives said that they haven’t yet found a “silver bullet.”
That said, Ripple has become a looming rival for Swift after it has signed up more than 200 members, including such industry players as MoneyGram, PNC Bank, and many other global banks. In comparison, though, the banking cooperative’s services that went live some 40 years ago has its payment-messaging network used by more than 11,000 financial firms to transfer money worldwide.
