It has been recently announced by Kuwait Finance House that instant cross-border remittance service using Ripple’s blockchain technology has been launched. The business tweeted out the zero fees “Instant International Transfer” service is now available to use for customers who will be able to make remittance transactions in Saudi Riyal to beneficiaries at Al Rajhi Bank.

With this announcement comes a lot of progress after there was an extensive trial period prior to the launch. Back in October last year, the global head of infrastructure innovation Dilip Rao hinted that the Kuwait Finance House Chairman said that the firm was working with Ripple to test a service that will be a direct rival to the standard for processing messages and instructions to settle global payments, SWIFT.

You can see Rao’s tweet below:

Chairman of Kuwait Finance House @KFHGroup_Eng ‘we are working with @Ripple and tested a service that challenges incumbents like #Swift’ #GIES2018 pic.twitter.com/Q2pH7ND8dC — Dilip Rao (@diliprao) October 30, 2018

Kuwait Finance House is one of the biggest Islamic banks across the globe and it was the first Arab nation’s first bank to team up with RippleNet, an enterprise network for worldwide remittance payments. It isn’t yet known revealed whether the Finance House is using Ripple’s enterprise software solution that allows banks to settle cross-border payments instantly with end-to-end tracking, xCurrent.

Kuwait Finance House suggests that they have worldwide goals in the cross-hairs and that it plans to expand the service beyond the Saudi Riyal

This service will expand to encompass most of the world countries in different currencies. KFH customers can make instant and secure zero fees remittances through their accounts in https://t.co/MvlRltl6zx. — Kuwait Finance House (@KFHGroup) January 6, 2019

It seems like Ripple is continuously making steps forward in the Middle East.

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