Blockchain startup Ripple is set to launch a cryptocurrency-centred product with commercial applications as early as mid-October.
According to a report in CNBC, Sagar Sarbhai, Ripple’s head of regulatory relations for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, said that the company had made ‘significant headway’ with its product called xRapid. The product is aimed at helping banks in speeding up transactions using the XRP cryptocurrency.
The company explains that xRapid uses XRP as a sort of bridge between currencies. This will allow banks and payment providers the ability to process cross-border transactions faster.
With xRapid, if a bank wants to process a transaction from US dollars to Indian rupees, the process would be greatly sped up as the dollars will be converted to XRP tokens and the money will then be moved overseas after it is converted back to rupees.
Rather than banks trialling the product, firms such as money transfer giants MoneyGram and Western Union have done so instead.
Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that ‘dozens’ of banks would be using xRapid by the end of 2019. The startup was founded in 2012 and owns about 60 billion of the total 100 billion XRP tokens in circulation.