Emerging markets have revealed a new and critical challenge for global payments. Instead of relying on traditional banking systems, consumers in these regions use a variety of platforms to make payments, access banking services and take part in commerce within and outside of their countries.

In Vietnam, a tech-oriented, new generation have made digital wallets a dominant force and, in Africa, mobile money is a primary avenue for commerce. A recent study also found that across South East Asia almost 30 percent of online sales occur on social media.

Digital commerce in these regions is booming, bringing more people into the global economy, but the underlying payment systems supporting their transactions are becoming increasingly fragmented.

Adding further complexity, billions of new people each year are accessing financial institutions for the first time ever. In India alone, more than a billion new people are expected to be banked over the next five years.

We need a better way for money to move around the world — one that syncs these disparate systems and can keep pace with expanding financial inclusion.

xVia as a solution

xVia allows for financial institutions and businesses to easily send payments to and from emerging markets by leveraging the benefits of RippleNet — Ripple’s decentralized global payments network.

By providing a standard API solution, xVia lets companies that want to send payments — payment providers, digital wallets and other corporates — quickly scale their businesses, differentiate their services and address their customers’ unique needs. The individuals and businesses that rely on them can send payments faster and cheaper anywhere in the world.

Similarly, for corporate marketplaces and financial institutions that are looking to scale, xVia provides the only quick and simple way to send payouts to new corridors while also creating a faster and more reliable user experience.

In this manner, xVia serves as a vehicle for a variety of different players within the global payments ecosystem to interact and complete transactions directly — no longer requiring custom connections. It can also help smaller businesses that want to leverage the same technology and standardized ruleset to send real-time, traceable payments around the world.

New xVia customers

Today, we’ve announced five new customers: FairFX, Exchange4Free, RationalFX, UniPAY and MoneyMatch. They will leverage xVia’s standard API solution to power payments through RippleNet and access new markets, including emerging markets faster and more efficiently.

As RippleNet grows, we’ll continue to add a broad array of payment providers, from telcos and mobile wallets, to more traditional financial institutions. This way we can support and provide a leading financial network that can address the needs of a more interconnected and diverse global economy.

We’ll also continue to improve our technology and sync our capabilities to make payments even faster. Ripple’s goal is to provide a fluid flow of money that can help provide opportunity both into and out of emerging markets, but also broadly around the world.

As money begins to travel around the world with less barriers and higher speeds, we believe that we can get one step closer to an Internet of Value — a world where money can move like information does today.