While Ripple the cryptocurrency has become a household name owing to it’s massive, 36,000% growth last year, Ripple’s payments processing platform too, is quite popular. The company has been on an expansion spree over the past few months! Ripple has been tying up with organizations and banks from across the world to expand their payments system - and their latest partnership is with a bank in India! India’s IndusInd Bank has now teamed up with Ripple for processing payments.
IndusInd Bank is tying up with Ripple’s RippleNet system of payment processing. RippleNet is a global network of banks which processes payments using distributed financial technology from Ripple. IndusInd bank has stated in their Press Release that using this technology would help the bank lower costs of international transfers, as well as the transfer time that it takes. Moreover, RippleNet would also make it easier for settling payments faster.
Ramesh Ganesan, Senior Executive Vice President at IndusInd Bank, said,“We plan to leverage the Ripple platform to provide an enhanced experience to our clients by delivering instant settlements and atomic confirmations on the back of a highly secure infrastructure. Building a digital platform that enhances client experience is a core part of our strategy and we are confident that our partnership with Ripple is another step in that direction. This will deliver more value to remitters, recipients and our institutional partners across the world.”
This is Ripple’s first major partnership in India. The company has been coming up with a number of partnerships in the Asian markets, including those in Japan, Singapore, China and Korea. With them now showing an active interest in partnership with Indian banks, it looks like Ripple is pursuing their Asian expansion rather aggressively. Moreover, Ripple is also expanding their presence in the Middle East with a number of partnerships in the region.
The concept of remittance is huge in India. Last year itself, the country witnessed a massive $65 Billion coming into the country in the form of remittance payments. This is the market that IndusInd bank intends to tap on with their Ripple partnership. Patrick Griffin, the head of business development for Ripple commented on this partnership, stating:
The payments problem is a global problem, but its negative impact disproportionally affects emerging market. Whether it’s an engineer in the US sending money to his family in India, or a small business owner in Brazil trying to move money to their suppliers in another country, it’s imperative that we connect the world’s financial institutions into a payments system that works for their customers, not against them.
Ripple, which tied up with names such as MoneyGram and Western Union over the couple of months, is heavily pushing these partnerships and is forming a global network of banks and financial institutes which use their payment processing platforms! 2018 is all set to be a big year the Ripple network.
