In an article published a few hours ago by the Business Times, a Singapore-based newspaper, it is specified how the San Francisco based company is preparing the ground to spread its technology in Singapore. This is what the newspaper wrote:
“Ripple, which sees South-east Asia as a priority market with pressing remittance demands, is among the firms that have held early talks with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for its technology to be part of the MAS’s blockchain experiment in cross-border payments, said CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, in an interview with The Business Times.
“Cross-border is where we think we can uniquely help,” said Mr Garlinghouse, referring to talks with MAS, while noting that no deal has been firmed up. Singapore’s regulator said last year during the Singapore Fintech Festival that it would experiment on cross-border payments using blockchain technology.”
So, after the Japanese and South Korean banks, even the Singapore banks could join this revolutionary new technology that would allow them to speed up transactions from days to hours, and cut the transaction costs dramatically.
About Ripple’s cryptocurrency, XRP, The Business Times wrote:
“But Ripple is also trying to sell its cryptocurrency XRP as a means of settlement when a bank wants to move money into a country but does not have a local-currency account held in a local bank there. As Mr Garlinghouse explained, Ripple aims to have XRP used for such cross-border payments, so that a bank can sell, for example, the greenback, into XRP in seconds, and convert XRP into another currency, say Sing-dollars, quickly. Banks hold capital and collateral against settlement risks, so a reduction in settlement time would translate to huge savings in the trillions, said Mr Garlinghouse.”
If this collaboration with the Singapore banks will be confirmed and continued in time, Ripple could take a big step forward, thus consolidating its leadership in blockchain technology and in real time payments.
