After the past week's hint, Team Ripple has launched the much-anticipated product xRapid, which is now live and commercially available.
This year has remained one of the most amazing years for RippleNet as it has significantly increased its reach and network. They have observed huge customer growth and signing an average of two production customers per week. RippleNet has now become a global network which powers fast, cheap and more transparent cross-border payments, as compared to traditional methods, to about 40+ countries and 6 continents.
XRapid will be deployed by Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union, Cuallix, and Mercury FX. Both the companies are payment providers, however, Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union is a Financial Institution which serves cooperative financial institutions all across the US. Cauflix aims to provide an effective payment system between the US and Mexico. Moreover, Cuallix and Mercury FX were participants in the pilot phase of the xRapid rollout earlier this year.
Ripple ensures that participants in the pilot phase experienced a large decrease in the cost for sending international payments. Regardless of having rapid advancement in technology globally, international payments are really slow with international wire transfers taking some days to settle. International transfers using XRapid only takes 2 minutes to settle. Also, international transfers using XRapid has a cost reduction of around 40 to 70%.
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How XRapid Works?
Firstly, XRapid uses XRP to power international transfers. An institution which wants to make an international payment first connects to a crypto exchange, exchanging the originating transfer currency with XRP. After this, newly converted XRP is sent to the cryptocurrency exchange in the country where payment is received, where it is converted into local fiat.
Until now, Ripple has not revealed anything about banking partners of its xRapid product. Till now, banking institutions are experimenting with the Ripple's xCurrent product. xCurrent enables banks and financial institutions to simply monitor and track payments without any demand of a counter-party, decreasing settlement times.
Alastair Constance, who is the CEO and founder of MercuryFX, said, “MercuryFX has been working closely with Ripple for more than a year to bring the power of RippleNet to our customers. In pilot tests, we saw the benefits of xRapid, and we’re excited to roll commercial payments out within the quarter. The time to replace slow, expensive payments architecture is now because the need for global access to smooth-flowing capital has never been so acute.”
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