As you may know, Ripple (XRP) has a large number of partnerships in many countries including German, US, Japan, Australia, etc. In this article, we will explore those partnerships and when they were announced.
In 2013, TAS group was the first company to adopt Ripple payment protocol. According to their website, TAS Group is specialised in software solutions for electronic money, payment systems, capital markets and Extended Enterprise. TAS Group serves major commercial & central banks and the main Financial Services centres in Italy and Europe, and the main global broker dealers of the Global Fortune 500.
In 2014, Ripple announced their first two partnerships with US banks. They are Cross River Bank and CBW bank. CBW bank is a century old bank which was established in 1892. The bank is a subsidiary of Cb Bancshares Corp. According to CBW, the Bank is classified as a commercial bank, state charter and Fed non-member, supervised by the FDIC. Currently, CBW is the 235th largest bank in Kansas. This bank does not operate outside Kansas. About Cross River Bank, it was founded in 2008 by a French-born entrepreneur, Gilles Gade. In November 2016, the bank had about $543 million in their asset and had more than 100 employees. In the same year, Fidor Bank AG announced their partnership with Ripple. Fidor Bank is a German bank which was founded in 2009 to re-establish the trust of customer. Fidor Bank was awarded “Global Growth Company” by The World Economic Forum and Celent Banking Model in 2015. Additionally, Earthport and XRP Labs announced partnership. Earthport counts Bank of America and HSBC among its banking clients and helps firms clear and settle payments in 65 countries. Moreover, Yantra Financial Technologies, a financial technology firm specializing in designing, developing and managing electronic payment systems announced their integration of Ripple to improve their risk management system.
In 2015, Western Union planned an experiment with XRP protocol. However, in 2018, WU reported that this experiment didn’t make any financial benefit. In the same year, Commonwealth Bank of Australia announced the adoption of Ripple payment protocol for one of their subsidiaries. Since then, CBA haven’t made any announcement about whether they had adopted Ripple.Established in 1911. Commonwealth Bank of Australia is the largest bank in Australia operating in many countries including US, New Zealand, UK, etc. According to their 2017 annual financial report, their net profit (by the June 30th) had achieved A$9,928 8$ more compared to the previous year. Additionally, they also succeeded in striking a partnership with Accenture, one of Fortune Global 500. Their clients include 95 of the Fortune Global 100 and more than three-quarters of the Fortune Global 500.
Moving on to 2016, it was when Ripple’s business started to boom. In 2016, they succeeded in partnering with a long list of banks over the globe: Santander, UniCredit, UBS, ReiseBank, CIBC, National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), ATB Financial, MUFG, BBVA, SEB,Standard Chartered, National Australia Bank (NAB), Mizuho Financial Group (MHFG), BMO Financial Group, Siam Commercial Bank and Shanghai Huarui Bank, Volante. On a side note, Deloitte presented a pioneer project at the Temenos Community Forum 2016 in Barcelona: full integration with the Ripple protocol and the Temenos Core Banking Software using the Bluzelle Altitude Gateway technology. Then in 2017, they kept striking more and more partnerships with banks around the world: Star One Credit Union,Akbank, eZforex.com. The most notable bank among their 2017 partnership is American Express. Plus, in 2018, MoneyGram has partnered up with Ripple to test out Ripple’s protocol.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*mm2tkftAWM_liavt
As you can see in the picture above, Ripple not only succeeds in striking partnerships with different banks around the globe but also succeeds in offering protocol experiments with 47 Japan’s bank.
Ripple’s protocol vs XRP token
Despite being able to deal with such a lengthy list of partnerships, there still exist some obscurities around XRP token use case. Many investors still confuse between the XRP coin and Ripple’s protocol and they also wonder what is the real use case of XRP token. Let’s set it clear for you. According to a 2015 Ripple’s article:
“XRP exists natively within the Ripple protocol as a counterparty-free currency, as Bitcoin does on the Blockchain. Because XRP is an asset, as opposed to a redeemable balance, it does not require that users trust any specific financial institution to trade or exchange it. All other currencies on Ripple do require some amount of trust, as they each have an issuer, from whom that currency can be redeemed (this includes BTC on the Ripple network)."
However, the article also stated:
“Users of the Ripple protocol are not required to use XRP as a medium of exchange or as a store of value. The Ripple protocol is currency agnostic. Users can use their preferred currency, whether that’s USD, BTC, XRP, or any other currency. Similarly, users may freely choose to trust any issuers they find reliable; this includes the trust implied by users trading in an issued non-XRP currency.”
This article is now deleted from XRP website and you can only read it on web.archive.org. On another note, Ripple also said that XRP token can be used as a bridge currency. Therefore, it’s wouldn’t be a surprise if bank started using XRP. However, Ripple’s will have to overcome a lot of hurdles to make XRP adopted by the bank. The ambiguity around the use case of XRP token remains until some large bank officially announces the adoption of XRP into their payment system.
XRP as an investment
Despite the centralization of XRP token and the ambiguity around the use cases, XRP token is currently one of the most promising coin that stands out in the market thanks to Ripple’s long list of partners. Nevertheless, like any traditional banking system, centralisation means the power to print as much coin as Ripple want and full control over them, thus suppressing and pushing the price down in long term. On the other hand, it is also recommended to take into consideration that due to the huge amount of total supply and the inexpensive price of each token, a lot of new investors have planned to accumulate a huge bag of XRP to jump on the trend. Therefore, it could affect XRP price significantly. On another note, as a group specialising in helping out investors, we recommend you to not follow this type of thinking. Why? Here is the reason: new investors usually buy XRP because of the hype not the fundamental of XRP token. They are also the first to sell when they see the FUDs around XRP starting to spread. We do not endorse this type of “get-rich overnight” thinking because it could affect the market badly in long term. Imagine what would happen if all investors bought the coin because of the profit but not the fundamental of the project? It would be a catastrophic disaster to the market. At Cryptomedics, we always offer personal consultancy to help the investors profit the most from our service. Our portfolio consists of GEMS that could help you to make 10x effortlessly.
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