Ripple Confirmed New xRapid Product To Launch In a Month
Ripple is a blockchain based platform designed as a real-time settlement system, currency exchange and remittance network, called RippleNet. The purpose of the platform is to connect banks and payment providers via RippleNet to enable sending and receiving money securely, instantly, nearly free of charge. Its network allows for fast global cross-border financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks. Ripple is built upon the XRP ledger, which is an open-source distributed consensus ledger protocol.
The decentralized native cryptocurrency called XRP is the digital asset supporting the network, designed to facilitate the transactions and trades for other currencies. In that respect, it is created to be a bridge currency. The XRP altcoin is being incorporated in the Ripple company’s latest cryptocurrency-based product xRapid, which has still not gone live.
In an interview with Arjun Kharpal for CNBC, Sagar Sarbhai, Ripple’s head of regulatory relations for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, confirmed the upcoming launch of the commercial version of xRapid with the following statement:
“We’ve been working on this product for the past two or three years, and I am very confident that in the next […] month or so you will see some good news coming in where we launch the product live in production.”
With all that talk about XRapid, a common confusion appears to rise, and it is between Ripple’s core existing software solution Xcurrent and the new project which is being developed – XRapid. As explained by Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit, Xcurrent aims to solve the messaging and settlement problem that exists in the financial system. It is allowing for real-time messaging and arrangement between institutions (banks, in particular) and companies during transactions and it usually deals with fiat currencies. The primary goal of xCurrent is to provide interoperability between any currencies, not just cryptocurrencies. He added that the confusion probably comes from the question “How does the XRP fit in the picture.” The asset XRP is incorporated in the xRapid product. xRapid tends to solve a liquidity problem, using XRP as a bridge currency. The xRapid product gives the means to have real-time liquidity and eliminate inflation, and it also enables payment providers and banks to process faster cross-border transactions. Using XCurrent, banks can transfer the existing fiat currencies, plus cryptocurrencies. With xRapid, the currencies will be converted into XRPs and only then transferred and then converted back to the respective currency.
So, similarly to xCurrent, the xRapid product is a real-time settlement platform designed to speed up international payments. Created for commercial usage and backed by XRP tokens, xRapid addresses the issue of minimizing capital requirements and reducing liquidity costs and making instant cross-border payment transactions.
Ripple still hasn’t announced any banks testing xRapid. However several firms were reported to have trailed the product with positive pilot results and feedback. The companies include MoneyGram, MercuryFX, Viamericas, Cuallix.