Three banks (Axis Bank, Standard Chartered, and Rakbank) have announced their decision to adopt Ripple’s Blockchain -based payment platform, the RippleNet, as a means of making cross-border transactions.
Axis Bank (India) and Standard Chartered (Singapore) will use the RippleNet as a passage through the “$15 billion trade corridor” between India and Singapore, according to a new report from FinExtra. Axis Bank will also reportedly be tapping into the cross-border Payments market between the United Arab Emirates’ Rakbank and India, a channel through which $12.6 billion flows annually.
Ripple’s blockchain platform will reduce the amount of time and money associated with sending payments across the border, a process that “has seen limited developments” in recent years, according to Axis Bank President Jimadri Chatterjee.
“The successful launch of our commercial cross-border payment service marks a significant milestone in the financial
industry’s progress in applying distributed ledger technology for [corporations],” said Gautam Jain, head of digitization and client access at Standard Chartered. Jain said that his bank was “incredibly proud leading the way in this area.”
Ripple: Picking Up Speed in Industry Adoption
The key to the financial and technological success of any cryptocurrency and its associated blockchain is to be used by corporations and individuals in the real world, so to speak. In other words, a cryptocurrency must not only be judged by what its value could be if it were adopted for practical use; it must eventually prove that it is capable of doing the things that it claims to be capable of.
Ripple’s network seems to be making headway towards becoming a practically-used platform that is capable of efficiently integrating into existing financial systems. This most recent announcement comes roughly a week after American Express and Santander announced that they would be using RippleNet to process cross-border payments made by some American Express business customers. According to a Finance Magnates report, these latest partnerships are part of a list more than 100 financial institutions that have adopted Ripple.
The new banking partnership also comes on the heels of Ripple’s announcement that BitLicense architect Ben Lawsky is the latest addition to the company’s board of directors. At the time of writing, Ripple’s market cap was the fourth largest in the crypto world, reaching above $24 billion; a single Ripple token was worth $0.24. If Ripple can continue to make more exciting partnerships in and out of the blockchain space, we may be able to expect some significant growth from the young coin.
