The long-awaited Ripple’s product xRapid is nearing completion, according to Sagar Sarbhai. Speaking to CNBC, the head of regulatory relations for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East at the company reaffirmed that Ripple is making great strides towards launching the product that will help banks to significantly increase the speed of cross-border transactions.

Mr. Sarbhai claimed that “I am very confident that in the next one month or so you will see some good news coming in where we launch the product live in production.“ Unlike the other Ripple products, such as xCurrent or xVia, xRapid uses the XRP tokens in its operations, thus XRP HODLers are hopeful its launch will cause the XRP price surge.

xRapid is a cross-border payment solution that uses XRP as a “bridge” between two fiat currencies. Say a German bank wants to process a transaction from EUR to USD. Right now, such an operation takes a lengthy amount of time to process and requires pre-funded local currency accounts. With xRapid, it becomes quite simple: EUR is converted to XRP, which is then transferred to another country within seconds. The funds are converted to USD at the other end, saving valuable time and resources.

Sarbhai has also noted a changing regulatory outlook on crypto, as, “A couple of years ago the narrative was: blockchain good, crypto bad. What we’re now seeing is more and more regulators, policymakers taking the whole space in one conjunction. So, I think that narrative thankfully is now changing because policymakers, regulators are seeing that there is a strong benefit that digital assets, cryptocurrencies bring in.“

Ripple has already signed a number of impressive partnerships with several financial giants, such as Santander and American Express. However, they are focused on xCurrent, which is currently used by more than 120 banks and financial institutions worldwide, according to Sarbhai. Earlier this year, Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, claimed that dozens of banks will use xRapid (therefore XRP as well) by the end of 2019.

Back in August, Ripple teamed up with three digital asset exchanges – American Bittrex, Mexican Bitso and Philippine Coins.ph. The fresh partnership will enable xRapid payments to move between XRP and the respective fiat currencies – US dollar, Mexican peso and Philippine peso. Ripple has earlier confirmed banks will not be the first to test xRapid. Firms that have already dabbled with the payment solution include Western Union, MoneyGram and payment platforms MercuryFX, Viamericas and Cuallix.

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