Western Union Explore Settlement Project With Ripple

Western Union might be start using the cryptocurrency Ripple in its new pilot program. The global remittance giant has confirmed that it is currently in discussions with the minds behind the digital currency, Ripple Labs. However, little is known about the details of these discussions. If the program does come to light it could be a memorable moment for Ripple and the whole cryptocurrency industry. Monica Long, the President of Marketing and Communications at Ripple Labs, didn’t confirm any details regarding the project however, she did say:

“In general, financial institutions and networks use Ripple as a technology that powers real-time settlement in any currency to lower the cost of liquidity and compliance. Ripple was created to enable an Internet of Value in which the world can move can move value as easily as information moves today.”

For a long time now, Ripple Labs has promoted the cryptocurrencies network for payments as a way to advance worldwide payments. Many people speculate that Western Union could use the cryptocurrency as a way to send money much faster and a lot cheaper however, this has yet to be confirmed. According to Bitcoin Magazine, a comment made by Western Unions Director of Global Corporate Communications Kristin Kelly, it does suggest that the business is interested in using cryptocurrency for settlements however they didn’t go into explain their reasoning. Kelly said:

“We have had preliminary discussions with Ripple regarding a pilot settlement project, but it is too early to discuss details at this time.”

The rumours of the likelihood of a partnership was made by the co-founder and CEO of Ripple Labs, Chris Larsen during his panel at the Milken Institute Global Conference on financial inclusion. During the panel, Larsen said:

“We’re trying to solve the problem of connecting local banks and financial institutions to the global economy. We have this problem where we have a variety of different networks, whether they are in U.S or Kenya or Europe – they’re NOT connected. You can make a phone call to anyone with a phone number and you can send an email to anybody with an email address, but you can only pay people that are in your payment network. The goal is – how do you get all these things operating together?”