xRapid by Ripple : What is it all about?

February 24, 2019 by Ramaa Mohan

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As we all know, over the last two days Ripple’s native token XRP has been surging and is up almost 50%. Over the last forty-eight hours, XRP’s graph has seen a linear rise and the reason is obvious. The long-awaited xRapid by Ripple product launch is just around the corner. Sagar Sarbhai, the head of regulatory relations for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, told CNBC in an interview that the company was finally on the verge of releasing the long-awaited product and alluded to the end of next month as the time.

But what is xRapid by Ripple? And what about this new solution has gotten everybody in the cryptocurrency market in such a tizzy? Let’s take a closer look.

Ripple

Cross-border payments are something that has been happening since the beginning of financial institutions, it is a service all banks provide and many customers subscribe to. The process of cross-border payments right now requires a pre-funded local account in the countries that a bank wants to transact and is also a very long process.

To this effect, it fortifies banks and financial institutions making their liquidity very low. Making it more expensive to send funds across-borders and making the process a lot longer.

This is Ripple’s main aim. To abolish these long processes and high transaction costs that come as a part and parcel with cross-border payments. Ripple is a real-time remittance and settlement system that is aiming to make cross-border payments less expensive and much faster.

Ripple proposes to do this using its product xRapid.

xRapid

xRapid by Ripple is a solution that is brought by the blockchain and cryptocurrency company Ripple. xRapid is a product that is solely aimed at financial institutions and banks.

xRapid by Ripple essentially facilitates low-cost liquidity. It is an interface that allows cross-border payments using the ecosystem’s native token XRP.

Using the digital asset XRP, xRapid offers low cost and on-demand liquidity. Added to these two boosts in user-experience, the solution also brings down the capital margins required to maintain and sustain high liquidity demands.

xRapid, as is the case with most Ripple products, is aimed at financial institutions, banks, and payment providers. The product aims to bring down their cost margins and the amount of time and resource that is spent on a process that could be done in a matter of minutes.

The Process

xRapid by Ripple essentially is a payment solution that facilitates real-time, low-cost cross-border payments. The product assures low-cost liquidity to banks and financial institutions, without compromising on user-experience and customer service.

The xRapid by Ripple solution goes through four main steps while sending funds across borders. Out of these four, the user only has to perform one, the others are done automatically by the interface itself.

Assume that funds are being sent from America to Mexico and that the transaction starts in USD and has to end in MXN. These are the steps of the transaction.

Step 1. Enter the amount and confirm

Step 2. USD converted to XRP

Step 3. XRP converted to MXN

Step 4. MXN Remitted

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Initial Testing and Launch

Ripple’s xRapid solution has been in the pipeline for a while. They have postponed the launch twice saying that the product still needed to be tested. The product now, however, has been under testing for a while and has given the company and the financial institutions very good results.

xRapid by Ripple brought down liquidity and transaction cost by 40-70% of what they were. And Sagar Sarbhai, the head of regulatory relations for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, has come out and confirmed that the launch of the product is just around the corner and could be as early as the end of next month.

Partners and Customers

The most recent partnership that Ripple has announced is the partnership with American PNC Bank. Another major partnership that Ripple announced in connection to XRP was with three exchanges in mid-August. The three exchanges were Bittrex, Bitso, and Coin.ph. All three of these exchanges were extensively used in during the trial period of xRapid.

Ripple, since its launch, has been backed by many big names and banks in the financial sector. They have a huge customer base that is just awaiting the launch of xRapid.

The beauty of their position right now is that banks that don’t use xRapid will soon have to begin using it as Ripple collects bigger and bigger names by the day. Currently, Ripple’s customers include the Western Union, Cambridge Local Payments, SBI Holdings, etc.

The XRP Token

The native token of the entire Ripple ecosystem is called XRP. The token is currently recovering from a year-long slump at a tremendous speed. The token briefly dethroned the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum as well.

The current value of the token is $0.587 USD.