It’s an ‘exciting time’ to be involved in cross-border payments, claims Ripple’s Sagar Sarbhai

Sagar Sarbhai, Head of Government & Regulatory Affairs, Asia Pacific at Ripple, recently spoke at the Bangkok FinTech Fair 2019, where he expressed his views regarding payment connectivity across the globe.

Cross-border payments have been an important aspect of the remittance industry for the last few years. Sarbhai believes that the current scenario is one of the “best times” to be involved in the development of cross-border payments.

The Ripple representative believes that there are few factors that are driving rapid innovation in the industry. He said,

“The first trend is the rise in digital payments which has been triggered by two factors; one is the explosive use of smartphones  and two would be the ubiquity of QR codes which has led to lower value payments becoming a reality.”

According to Sarbhai, the demand for lower-value payments is very evident among customers and he believes that the introduction of digital assets is a major factor. Sarbhai also acknowledged that more and more central banks were creating  “domestic real-time infrastructure.”

He suggested that the idea of virtual assets had led to the creation of this financial infrastructure, adding that this development has been significant.

He went on to say,

“About three years ago, most of the innovations was happening on the front end customer facing side of  things but now we were seeing more and more innovation happening at the cross border infrastructure level where Ripple is focused.”

Keeping in line with the same thought, Ripple recently announced that its partnership Bank Santander, had added another payment corridor between the United Kingdom and Poland. The upgrade was completed between the two countries and instant fund transfer was enabled. The announcement is a major step towards Ripple’s worldwide penetration.