LianLian International, a China-based payment services provider, has partnered with RippleNet in order to offer faster and less expensive cross border transactions to their customers across the US, Europe, and China, according to a Feb. 7 announcement on Ripple’s blog.
RippleNet is Ripple’s decentralized global network, made up of banks and other financial institutions, that handles the real-time confirmations of financial transactions.
Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, tweeted that Ripple “just opened the door to the largest e-commerce market in the world”:
We just opened the door to the largest e-commerce market in the world for our #RippleNet partners with LianLian. https://t.co/R3HyqxhF9U
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) February 7, 2018
While Ripple (XRP) is often referred to as a cryptocurrency and is listed on CoinMarketCap, the token is centralized and its source code is owned privately by Ripple, while a cryptocurrency by definition is decentralized and outsider-verified.
LianLian will use Ripple’s centralized software payment solution, xCurrent, which is tailored to work with financial institutions by allowing banks to confirm payment details in real time before each transaction and after each delivery.
LianLian already lists PayPal and Apple as their strategic partners, serving marketplaces like Amazon, Ali Express, and Ebay. In reference to the Ripple partnership, Arthur Zhu, CEO of LianLian, said:
“With RippleNet, we will further enhance that experience and increase our market share by offering customers instant, blockchain-powered payments across the 19 currencies that we currently support. We look forward to working with Ripple to power payment flows between China and RippleNet members in new markets.”
Ripple has partnerships with over 100 financial institutions, most recently partnering in mid-January with Moneygram to speed up fiat payments.
The RippleNet and LianLian partnership comes at a time when China has been increasing crypto regulation, removing crypto-related ads on social media and search engines and banning foreign exchanges on top of the earlier domestic exchange restrictions.
Forget Ripple! Ripple has no business being grouped together with decentralized currencies. Ripple is centralized and therefore no better than any other fiat system that already exists. Any true believers in decentralized systems should know this.
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