Ripple is eyeing a major expansion into the Middle East and is opening an office in Dubai.

Ripple is definitely not sitting on their laurels this year. The San Francisco-based payments company has been aggressively expanding, and it’s now turning its eye to the Middle East.

Ripple Setting up Shop in Dubai

The global head of infrastructure innovation for Ripple, Dilip Rao, was speaking recently at the Global Islamic Economic Summit 2018. It was there that he said that Ripple was “seriously planning to enter the Middle East market.”

To that end, the company has plans to open an office in Dubai, the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This would be the latest in a string of international offices for Ripple, which has set up shop in London, India, San Francisco, New York, Luxembourg, Sydney, and Singapore.

The Importance of the Middle East

Rao elaborated on how the region is an important new market for the company behind XRP. He said:

Our focus initially is on cross-border payments because we think that’s where there is the most friction. In this part of the world, there is a huge requirement for cross-border transactions. This will support the economy both within the region and the rest of the world.

Ripple has already made inroads into the Middle East. Back in September, Saudi Arabia’s National Commercial Bank joined RippleNet. This development followed on the heels of Kuwait Finance House acknowledging that they were using the Ripple blockchain for cross-border payment solutions.

Ripple has been a busy bee this year. Rao states that over 200 financial institutions from all over the world have joined Ripple’s network. The company recently released their quarterly report that shows sales of XRP have doubled from the previous quarter. They are also beefing up their ranks, as is evident by the firm recently poaching the head of Google’s wireless messaging team, Amir Sarhangi, to become their Vice President of Products.

XRP is currently trading for $0.456683, a decline of 0.16 percent over the last 24 hours. Ripple’s cryptocurrency is sitting at number three on the market cap chart, just a mere $2 billion from number two, Ethereum.

Do you think Ripple’s move to Dubai will pay off? Let us know in the comments below.

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