NEW YORK—In what’s being described as one of the first uses of a virtual currency by financial institutions in a commercial product, three companies that provide cross-border payment services plan to use technology developed by startup Ripple that employs cryptocurrency XRP to speed transactions.
Ripple, a large holder and promoter of XRP, said its platform for cross-border payments, called xRapid, is now commercially available and that it had signed up firms Cuallix, MercuryFX and Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union as clients, Reuters reported.
XRapid uses XRP, a virtual currency powered by distributed database technology called blockchain, to make international payments faster, according to Ripple.
The Companies Involved
Mercury FX and Cuallix are money transfer companies, while Catalyst is a wholesale cooperative financial institution that provides a range of services to 1,400 credit unions throughout the United States, Reuters noted.
“The projects, assuming they go live, will mark one of the first uses of a virtual currency by financial institutions in a commercial product,” Reuters said.
Ripple Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse, in an interview with Reuters, declined to disclose the volume of payments Ripple expects to be processed by the three financial firms using xRapid.
Continuing to Experiment
“The announcement comes as financial firms continue to experiment with blockchain, the technology that emerged to track and power cryptocurrency transactions. Large companies hope that blockchain can help them simplify some of their processes ranging from international payments to securities settlement. Despite the excitement surrounding blockchain, few large scale projects have gone live,” Reuters said.
Now With Free Shipping! The CUToday.info Daily News Email Keeps Getting Better!
The biggest, best and freshest news reporting in credit unions remains free, and now has an added bonus---free shipping to your email address! That’s right. Each morning CUToday.info delivers its daily Fresh Today news update offering the latest headlines and breaking news right to your email, with the easy-to-read headlines format allowing you to click on the stories that interest you most in order to learn more. So stop paying those bank-fee-like subscription prices from other so-called “news” publications!
If you haven’t yet signed up for the new email solution on which CUToday.info has partnered with ResponseGenius, you can do so here. Signing up requires less than one minute of your time—and it’s free!
Please note that after signing up you may need to go to your Spam/Junk folder and mark the morning headlines email as safe. CUToday.info does not provide its list of readers and emails to outside parties, and we will not be contacting you to sell you an extended warranty or sending you any links so you may cash in on an inheritance you didn’t know was coming.
And did we mention it’s free?