The company has also announced it will be exploring an entry into the Japanese card payment market.

The price of Ripple’s XRP token has been growing, with prices rising more than 30% in the last 24 hours, and more than 450% in the last month, to sit at around $1.80 today.

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On top of the price hikes, SBI Ripple Asia, a joint venture between Ripple and Japanese financial service company SBI Holdings, announced it is creating a consortium to look into the role distributed ledger technologies such as Ripple can play in card payments.

The consortium has already developed technology which enables payments through Ripple using phone numbers or QR codes.

Why has Ripple’s price gone up so fast?

Ripple was one of the only major cryptocurrencies to not take a big hit over the Christmas period, quadrupling the week before 22 December while the likes of BTC and ETH were dropping up to 30%.

It’s believed a lot of this is due to its popularity in Asia, as shown above with its SBI Ripple Asia venture. This venture has been responsible for several big partnerships in the region, with over 75 companies now supporting the technology.

In the USA, it also announced in late November a partnership with American Express, opening up American Express’s business customers to route payments through Ripple’s blockchain network. Ripple also announced XRP will be used with American Express to speed up payments “later on”.

These types of partnerships have also given a legitimacy to Ripple, tying the value of the XRP token to Ripple’s performance as a company, rather than others such as bitcoin which is based on pure speculation.

It has also been heavily rumoured that XRP will soon be supported by Coinbase. The popular trading platform has been labelled as a king maker in the cryptocurrency space due to its reach and ease of use for buyers and sellers. The platform is adding over 100,000 new users a day and is the most downloaded app on the iOS App Store in many countries globally, including the USA.

Today’s Ripple price

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Suriname NOK - Svalbard And Jan Mayen SZL - Swaziland SEK - Sweden CHF - Switzerland SYP - Syria TWD - Taiwan TJS - Tajikistan THB - Thailand USD - Timor-Leste XOF - Togo NZD - Tokelau TOP - Tonga TTD - Trinidad And Tobago TND - Tunisia TRY - Turkey TMT - Turkmenistan USD - Turks And Caicos Islands AUD - Tuvalu UGX - Uganda UAH - Ukraine AED - United Arab Emirates TZS - United Republic Of Tanzania UYU - Uruguay UZS - Uzbekistan VUV - Vanuatu VES - Venezuela VND - Viet Nam USD - Virgin Islands (British) USD - Virgin Islands (U.S.) YER - Yemen ZMW - Zambia BTC - bitcoin BTS - BitShares DASH - Dash DOGE - DogeCoin EAC - EarthCoin EMC - Emercoin ETH - Ethereum FCT - Factom FTC - Feathercoin LD - Linden Dollar LTC - LiteCoin NMC - Namecoin NVC - NovaCoin NXT - Nxt PPC - Peercoin STR - Stellar VTC - VertCoin XMR - Monero XPM - Primecoin XRP - Ripple 0 AUD - Australia CAD - Canada MXN - Mexico NZD - New Zealand GBP - United Kingdom USD - United States EUR - Euro XCD - East Caribbean Dollar XOF - CFA Franc BCEAO XPF - CFP Franc XAF - CFA Franc BEAC AFA - Afghanistan ALL - Albania DZD - Algeria AOA - Angola XCD - Anguilla XCD - Antigua And Barbuda ARS - Argentina AMD - Armenia AWG - Aruba EUR - Austria AZN - Azerbaijan BSD - Bahamas BHD - Bahrain BDT - Bangladesh BBD - Barbados BYN - Belarus EUR - Belgium BZD - Belize XOF - Benin BMD - Bermuda INR - Bhutan BTN - Bhutan BOB - Bolivia BAM - Bosnia And Herzegovina BWP - Botswana BRL - Brazil BND - Brunei Darussalam BGN - Bulgaria XOF - Burkina Faso BIF - Burundi KHR - Cambodia XAF - Cameroon KYD - Cayman Islands XAF - Central African Republic XAF - Chad CLP - Chile CNY - China AUD - Cocos (Keeling) Islands COP - Colombia XAF - Congo NZD - Cook Islands CRC - Costa Rica HRK - Croatia CUP - Cuba EUR - Cyprus CZK - Czech Republic DKK - Denmark DJF - Djibouti XCD - Dominica DOP - Dominican Republic USD - Ecuador EGP - Egypt USD - El Salvador XAF - Equatorial Guinea ERN - Eritrea EUR - Estonia ETB - Ethiopia FJD - Fiji EUR - Finland EUR - France EUR - French Guiana XPF - French Polynesia EUR - French Southern Territories XAF - Gabon GMD - Gambia GEL - Georgia EUR - Germany GHS - Ghana GIP - Gibraltar EUR - Greece DKK - Greenland XCD - Grenada EUR - Guadeloupe USD - Guam GTQ - Guatemala GNF - Guinea XOF - Guinea-Bissau GYD - Guyana HTG - Haiti USD - Haiti HNL - Honduras HKD - Hong Kong HUF - Hungary ISK - Iceland INR - India IDR - Indonesia EUR - Ireland ILS - Israel EUR - Italy JMD - Jamaica JPY - Japan JOD - Jordan KZT - Kazakhstan KES - Kenya AUD - Kiribati KWD - Kuwait KGS - Kyrgyzstan LAK - Laos EUR - Latvia LBP - Lebanon LRD - Liberia LYD - Libya CHF - Liechtenstein EUR - Lithuania EUR - Luxembourg MOP - Macao MKD - Macedonia MGA - Madagascar MWK - Malawi MYR - Malaysia MVR - Maldives XOF - Mali EUR - Malta USD - Marshall Islands EUR - Martinique MRU - Mauritania MUR - Mauritius MMK - Myanmar EUR - Mayotte MDL - Moldova EUR - Monaco MNT - Mongolia EUR - Montenegro XCD - Montserrat MAD - Morocco MZN - Mozambique NAD - Namibia ZAR - Namibia AUD - Nauru NPR - Nepal EUR - Netherlands XPF - New Caledonia NIO - Nicaragua XOF - Niger NGN - Nigeria NZD - Niue AUD - Norfolk Island USD - Northern Mariana Islands NOK - Norway OMR - Oman PKR - Pakistan USD - Palau PAB - Panama USD - Panama PGK - Papua New Guinea PYG - Paraguay PEN - Peru PHP - Philippines NZD - Pitcairn PLN - Poland EUR - Portugal USD - Puerto Rico QAR - Qatar RON - Romania RUB - Russian Federation RWF - Rwanda XCD - Saint Kitts And Nevis XCD - Saint Lucia EUR - Saint Pierre And Miquelon XCD - Saint Vincent And The Grenadines WST - Samoa STN - Sao Tome And Principe SAR - Saudi Arabia XOF - Senegal RSD - Serbia SCR - Seychelles SLL - Sierra Leone SGD - Singapore EUR - Slovakia EUR - Slovenia SBD - Solomon Islands SOS - Somalia ZAR - South Africa KRW - South Korea SSP - South Sudan EUR - Spain LKR - Sri Lanka SRD - Suriname NOK - Svalbard And Jan Mayen SZL - Swaziland SEK - Sweden CHF - Switzerland SYP - Syria TWD - Taiwan TJS - Tajikistan THB - Thailand USD - Timor-Leste XOF - Togo NZD - Tokelau TOP - Tonga TTD - Trinidad And Tobago TND - Tunisia TRY - Turkey TMT - Turkmenistan USD - Turks And Caicos Islands AUD - Tuvalu UGX - Uganda UAH - Ukraine AED - United Arab Emirates TZS - United Republic Of Tanzania UYU - Uruguay UZS - Uzbekistan VUV - Vanuatu VES - Venezuela VND - Viet Nam USD - Virgin Islands (British) USD - Virgin Islands (U.S.) YER - Yemen ZMW - Zambia BTC - bitcoin BTS - BitShares DASH - Dash DOGE - DogeCoin EAC - EarthCoin EMC - Emercoin ETH - Ethereum FCT - Factom FTC - Feathercoin LD - Linden Dollar LTC - LiteCoin NMC - Namecoin NVC - NovaCoin NXT - Nxt PPC - Peercoin STR - Stellar VTC - VertCoin XMR - Monero XPM - Primecoin XRP - Ripple 7 days 14 days 31 days

What are Ripple and XRP?

Ripple itself is the San Francisco-based company behind the XRP token and is essentially a fast money transfer network using blockchain technology. Ripple’s goal is to be a global settlement network which will eventually allow anyone to transfer money from any currency to any currency in seconds.

Currently, when you transfer money to another currency, that money needs to go through an exchange which can often take days and can be quite costly.

Ripple’s solution to this is to use its XRP token as a sort of global underlying currency. Currencies transferred over the Ripple network are converted into XRP before being converted into the currency the sender is looking to move to.

Transfers over Ripple take a maximum of four seconds, with much lower transaction fees than traditional exchanges.

Unlike bitcoin, Ripple’s XRP tokens aren’t received by mining, with all 100 billion XRP all existing on the platform already but not all are on the market yet. To avoid flooding the market and reducing coin price, Ripple releases around 1 billion XRP every month. The company also hopes by doing this it will create a similar effect to XRP price that mining has had on bitcoin and other similar currencies.