Ripple and XRP will take over the U.S. and the world one step at a time disrupting the payments industry

Opinion

More often than not, Ripple is regarded as a blockchain company rather than a payment company which is a common misconception among the general public.

Ripple and XRP fans in the community have been very happy and excited with the numerous partnerships that it has been making over the last year.

The research done in this opinion piece unfolds three consecutive steps which were noticed after connecting all the appropriate dots.

The First

In its recent statement, Ripple announced that it has crossed more than 200 partnerships with financial institutions/banks across 40 countries worldwide. The seemingly random partnerships that Ripple has been making is not so random once you step back and take a look at the bigger picture.

Ripple partnered with D+H Corporation – a leading provider of technology solutions to financial institutions globally, on October 11, 2015. A few months from this date, February 2016, D+H announced that it had successfully integrated blockchain distributed ledger technology into its global payment services offerings.

It further acknowledged the solution with their platform called, “Global PAYplus” payments platform that helps financial institutions manage different payment types and currencies across national borders.

The Second

The Clearing House Payments Company LLC. comes into the picture as it plans to reshape and upgrade a brand new payments infrastructure for the whole of U.S.

Clearing House Association and The Clearing House Payments Company LLC conduct business under the name The Clearing House. It is the oldest banking association and payments company in the United States.

On June 17, 2017, D+H was acquired by Vista Equity Partners and combined with Misys, operating under the new company name Finastra. Finastra revamped the Global PAYplus to Fusion Payments.

Moreover, on December 05, 2017, PNC, a top-10 US bank went live on RTP [Real-Time Payment]. To make things more interesting, PNC is one among the multiple partners that the Clearing House has.

The Third

The last but the final connection was when the dots traced a full circle, as Ripple has already partnered with PNC. If it does seem like a long shot, the list of Clearing House includes banks like Banco Santander, UBS, BNY Mellon and there are rumors that Bank of America and Ripple are in talks about a partnership.

With the above, the inference that can be drawn is that Ripple is indirectly related to all the partners on the Clearing House’s RTP, which is set to go live by 2020. Ripple is already putting Swift out of business with its blockchain solutions like xCurrent, xVia, and xRapid.

Moreover, there is also speculation in the community that the Fed-appointed Faster Payment Task Force is looking to XRP for an improved payment system that offers greater speed, security, and efficiency.

Furthermore, the Bank of England’s Governor, Mark Carney discussed XRP, developing an RTGS and also the plans for cross-border payment solutions.

They also conducted a study by teaming up with Ripple in 2017 to work towards new ideas in cybersecurity, digital assets, distributed ledger technology, machine learning, and many other topics.

In addition to the above, Ripple has already signed up more than a few banks that have gone live using xRapid, some of the banks include, EuroExim, SendFriend, Viamericas etc.

SBI Holdings, a humongous consortium of banks in Japan has a major partnership with Ripple to make use of its blockchain payment solution. Moreover, R3 is an enterprise blockchain software firm teeming with partnerships across various countries and financial institutions.

As per new reports, SBI has partnered with R3 to increase adoption of the Corda blockchain via a joint venture. According to the terms of this joint venture, SBI Holdings will have access to Corda licenses and SBI Holdings plans to spread this adoption not just in Japan but all across East Asia.

With such massive partnerships spread across the world and state of the art payment solutions that Ripple is putting out in the market, it will be hard for the banks and other financial institutions to stay away from using those.

The only question that remains is how big will the adoption be? That is for time to tell.