Saudi British Bank Partners With Ripple For International Payments With XRP

Big altcoin news are coming from the Financial Sector Conference held on April 24 – showing the Saudi British Bank and its XRP cross border transfer service launch. This payment infrastructure is based on the Ripple blockchain network that utilizes crypto asset XRP for liquidity.

With more than $50 billion in assets, Saudi British Bank (SABB) initially joined the Ripple network in January 2018, being supported by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) to use the emerging technology and its blockchain to process payments.

As the Saudi British Bank noted, the first pilot transaction on the Ripple blockchain network has been made in December 2018 when the bank started collaborating with Ripple to implement its blockchain technology onto the bank’s existing payments system.

As many best cryptocurrency news sites noted back in 2018, the CEO of Ripple Brad Garlinghouse has noted his excitement for this project. Speaking to Bloomberg in November 2018, Garlinghouse said:

“The technologies that banks use today that Swift developed decades ago really hasn’t evolved or kept up with the market. Swift said not that long ago they didn’t see blockchain as a solution to correspondent banking. We’ve got well over 100 of their customers saying they disagree. What we’re doing and executing on a day-by-day basis is, in fact, taking over Swift.”

For those of you who don’t know, a network like Swift will act as a messaging platform for the Saudi British Bank – communicating and processing information. Payments, in this manner, are actual data that is processed by third party service providers on network operators such as Swift.

If there is a limited number of financial institutions on a network – whether centralized or a blockchain protocol – it would restrict the extent to which the network can be used in order to send and receive payments for both the Saudi British Bank and its users.

The Deputy Managing Director Corporate and Institutional Banking at Saudi British Bank (SABB) Majed Najm also expressed his excitement, stating the following:

“SABB provides its customers with faster, safer and more transparent cross-border payment services by the launch of “Blockchain” technology through “Ripple”. The Indian Rupee (INR) is a positive start to an upcoming roadmap being the first currency to be activated in SABB. This plan aims to provide customers with a valuable service and link more countries and currencies in the near future.”

As the coming altcoin news show, partnerships like this will allow Ripple to become a direct competitor to Swift over the long run.