Ripple: New payment platform integrated xRapid to save costs
The adaptation of blockchain technology is progressing daily, as more and more companies are recognizing the potential and the resulting opportunities. A new payment platform has integrated Ripple’s xRapid business software to reduce the cost of cross-border payments.
The payment platform SendFriend (https://www.sendfriend.io/), which is supported by MIT Media Lab, Barclays, Ripple, Techstars and Mastercard among others, will integrate xRapid into the internal process flow to not only save costs but also increase speed and security for transactions.
The further business plan provides that SendFriend will be launched before the end of this year. The platform is primarily aimed at people living in the Philippines who want to send money to their family members quickly and cheaply. The project was awarded the MIT Media Lab Translational Innovation Alliance Award because it gives local people who do not have access to banking services the opportunity to move funds across borders.
David Lighton, CEO of the company, explains that xRapid offers a new level of efficiency and gives people and companies the opportunity to work more effectively with their capital:
This enables us to work more efficiently with our capital. These are real-time settlements, so we don’t have to pre-finance, we don’t have to park money in the receiving corridor and then manage the currency risk. We can simply do it one after the other while the transactions are being processed.
The average transaction cost at Western Union is 7%, whereas SendFriend wants to drastically reduce this value to 2 to 3%. Lighton worked at the World Bank for several years and found that it was incredibly difficult to send money from one place to another in an emergency. Often the cost of a “lightning transfer” is more than $10 or $20, although the actual transfer amount is only $500. According to Lighton, this cannot and must not be the case if financially disadvantaged people have to send money quickly to their relatives.
Ripple took up this fact in a new promotional video. Here it is shown that it is faster to pack money into your own backpack, get on an airplane and fly to your destination to hand over the money to the recipient. This is often faster than for international transfers.
It’s faster to get on a plane and fly money across borders than it is to send it as a digital payment. @Ripple is changing that. Learn more: https://t.co/fWuGHcp3Tu pic.twitter.com/RAxEks9qxv
– Ripple (@Ripple) October 30, 2018
