Ripple Managing Director Discusses xRapid, SWIFT & xCurrent

Navin Gupta is Ripple’s managing director of South Asia, North Africa and the Middle East who has said that the company's cross-border payment solution xCurrent gives banks and financial organisations a massive cost saving over SWIFT.

According to The Daily HODL, Gupta recently sat down in an interview with The Asian Banker where he said that the Brazilian based cross border payment company BeeTech managed to eliminate SWIFT fees for all of its remittance corridors “dropping in its own fees from $20 to $2 per transaction in the process.”

As Gupta says, he believes there is a tipping point in terms of adoption for Ripple’s cross-border payment solutions, highlighting that there was an increase in the volume of progressive banks and financial institutions jumping on board with Ripple. Gupta said, that “there is a very significant amount of movement from High Street banks to join the network and we believe at different points in their lifecycle they will make this decision.”

Currently, there are more than 200 businesses on Ripple’s network and news seems to be surfacing every week about a new firm that has joined.

“Every one of those 200 financial institutions, of which 50% are from Asia and the Middle East, are production ready and are in the process of going live. It took us two years to acquire the first 100 customers but it took only one year to acquire the next 100. Existing customers are using us more by leveraging our multiple corridors, and the network effect is really starting to take off.”

When it comes to Ripple’s xRapid, the managing director says that the firm is pushing for an increase in regulation clarity on digital assets around the world is what’s needed to bring more banks and financial organisations on board. Gupta believes that the native token of Ripple is on the brink to giving global firms a new way to move money without having to hold big sums of cash in banks around the world.

“The biggest cost is holding local currencies in making payout possible. Banks keep a large pre-funding amount of beneficiary currencies which translates into a higher cost of capital and depreciation risk that increases the cost per transaction.”

The xRapid payment solution has been live since October 2018 when it was launched by Ripple and so far, there is a total of 13 businesses which are confirmed to be on board.