Blockchain startup Ripple has announced financial institutions that participated in xRapid pilots have seen huge cost savings and increased speed when using Ripple’s XRP token for on-demand liquidity.
The company on Thursday announced aggregated and averaged results from several early xRapid pilots. xRapid, Ripple’s on-demand liquidity solution, was launched in beta in late last summer. It uses XRP token for more efficient cross-border transactions between financial institutions sending fiat payments.
According to the official release, participating financial institutions saw a savings of 40-70 percent during xRapid pilots. In addition, an average xRapid payment took a little over two minutes, compared to existing average of 2-3 days when sending cross-border payments.
“It’s encouraging to see positive xRapid results because they validate what many in our industry already know: certain digital assets have utility,” said Asheesh Birla, SVP of Product at Ripple. “XRP’s utility lies in its speed and scalability, which makes it the perfect fit for cross-border payments. The XRP Ledger can send 1,500 transactions per second.”
The pilot involved testing payments from the U.S. to Mexico. Earlier in January, Telecom company IDT and global currency exchange provider MercuryFX partnered with Ripple to use xRapid. Money transfer giant MoneyGram also partnered with Ripple to pilot the use of XRP in payment flows through xRapid. In February, Western Union also confirmed that it is experimenting with blockchain technology in collaboration with Ripple.
"Mercury is delighted with the incredible speed and cost-efficiency of the xRapid pilot phase and is excited about a production rollout in the near future,” said Alastair Constance, Founder of Mercury FX. “To date, the Ripple collaboration has been a great success.”
