Team Ripple announced on October 1st that their product, xRapid, is now available and will soon be moved into production with multiple customers.

2018 has been a great year for RippleNet and have dramatically expanded its reach and network. They have seen massive customer growth as well as signing an average of two production customers per week. RippleNet has become a global network that powers fast, cheap and more transparent cross-border payments, compared to traditional methods, to over 40 countries and six continents.

They provide on-demand liquidity to financial institutions using XRP. XRapid is the product that is powering the transactions and is now commercially available and moving into production with multiple customers, including MercuryFX, Cuallix and Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union.

Ripple released their pilot testing of xRapid in Mai and reported that the participating institutions saw a saving of 40 – 70 percent compared to what they normally pay with other foreign providers. Also, an average xRapid payment took just over two minutes, compared to today’s average of 2-3 days when sending cross-border payments.

Two weeks ago, Toshi Time covered the story where Ripple’s executive claimed that its XRP product would go live soon. Sagar Sarbhai, 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 increase the speed of cross-border transactions significantly. Mr Sarbhai argued that regulators do not think that cryptocurrencies are as “bad” anymore and that they now see blockchain and cryptocurrencies in one conjunction.

“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 see that there is a strong benefit that digital assets, cryptocurrencies bring in”.

Now, xRapid has become a reality for Ripple. The reason xRapid can increase institutions efficiency is that xRapid eliminates the need for a pre-funded nostro account when executing a cross-border payment. It sources liquidity from XRP on exchanges around the world. As a result, cross-border transactions occur in minutes and at a lower cost compared to traditional methods, which take days and incur high foreign exchange fees.

Alastair Constance, CEO and founder of MercuryFX, said the following about the product:

“MercuryFX has been working closely with Ripple for more than a year to bring the power of RippleNet to our customers. In pilot tests, we saw the benefits of xRapid, and we’re excited to roll commercial payments out within the quarter. The time to replace slow, expensive payments architecture is now because the need for global access to smooth-flowing capital has never been so acute.”

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