Cryptocurrencies are an emerging technology designed to disrupt the future of a number of markets. The cryptocurrency known as Ripple, officially called XRP, is one of the crypto assets that is aiming to shake up an entire industry – namely, the cross-border payments industry.
Ripple’s goals for XRP are quite different from what Bitcoin is aiming to achieve. Both provide users of the cryptocurrency a way to control their own assets, however, Ripple was designed for speed and to achieve some of the lowest fees of any crypto asset. These attributes make it extremely attractive for banks – Ripple’s main target customer – to move large amounts of money quickly, at a very low cost.
Due to this, Ripple is said to eventually become a replacement for SWIFT – the current standard for international bank wires, that includes slow speeds and high fees. Banks have been trialing Ripple’s xRapid which uses XRP to move funds at lightning-fast speeds between two third-parties.
