Ripple & SWIFT: The Cross-Border Battle

There are several community members of the crypto space which have long been debating the possible partnership between Ripple and SWIFT. If we look at the stretched back history of continuous achievements announced by Ripple in social networks, events, press releases, many consider it a casual step in the right direction for the finance world.

An article posted back in October last year by Ethereum World News looks into this possibility and noted that they deem it unlikely that this kind of ‘dream’ could come true or that it would not materialise in a short nor a medium term.

Now though, these possible doubts seemed to have been eliminated through the actions of both firms. They didn’t have to outright deny the rumours for us all to understand that the two companies are driving to provide solutions that compete with each other.

A few weeks ago, SWIFT’s official website posted an article which noted that the development of a system based on the use of blockchain technologies is in a state of constant advance. The SWIFT GPI system proactively processes interbanking payments without any hesitation and for reasonable prices.

The global head of payments and collection products at Deutsche Bank, Christof Hofmann said:

“We believe the gpi pre-validation service will add significant value to our clients, increasing the overall gpi client experience. Beneficiary account validation addresses an important pain-point in cross-border payments; it will help increase STP ratios while reducing fraud and exception handling.”

Hyperledger technology is being used to develop its own solution based through blockchain and so with this, a partnership with Ripple is seen as something that isn’t crucial for the financial services firm.

No partnership

In early November 2018, a spokesperson at SWIFT confirmed that although the company was working with blockchain technologies but Ripple was no part of this.

“I’m not sure where those rumours are coming from but the upcoming standards release … is entirely unrelated to RippleNet. Its primary purpose is to ensure all payments include a tracking reference (UETR, Unique End-to-end Transaction Reference) which will allow banks to track their GPI payments end-to-end in real time.”

The Chief Marketing Strategist at Ripple, Cory Johnson confirmed the rumours and said that Ripple is looking to provide a product which competes with SWIFT and that will eventually replace it.

What are your thoughts? Let us know what you think down below in the comments!