Yesterday, saw the first close of the ‘football transfer window’ in England. The window is still open across Europe but due to differing regulations, some countries will lose access to those before others.

If you’re not familiar, twice a year professional football associations allow teams to ‘transfer’ players between clubs, this includes clubs purchasing players and players being loaned out to other clubs. The politics and logistics of it are all quite complicated, so, we’ll just keep it simple and avoid all that.

We however are interested in how finance crosses hands during this time, with players being sold for values exceeding £50,000.00 on a regular basis, there’s a lot of money to be made and lost during the transfer window. Moreover, there's a lot of money being transferred across borders, between clubs and associations. This is where XRP comes into play.

At present, football transfers use FIAT currency (generally GBP or the Euro) which can often delay the finalisation of transfers and cost an awful lot in fees. Using FIAT also means clubs are susceptible to losing money through fluctuating values within FIAT currency . In this window in England alone (between June and mid-August) it has been found that the falling value of the pound, as a result of Brexit, has cost English football clubs an extra £88.3 million through conversion rates into the Euro etc.

Well, with XRP, first of all these conversion fees are lost. Yes, the club will eventually want to convert their XRP back to FIAT, but they can do this at their own pace, when rates might be slightly better. There’s even opportunity here for funds to rise too. Say a player is purchased for £20 million in XRP one week, a few days later, that £20 million could be worth £21 million, though likewise, it could drop too.

The real advantage for XRP here is the cross border payment solution, allowing for faster, cleaner and more transparent payments to be made, reducing the likelihood of bribery and reducing the time it takes for payments to reach the team who is ready to release a player. In essence, this will speed up the transfer process, giving football clubs more time to focus on actually getting the signings in, instead of ending up like Tottenham Hotspurs, who have broken a record this year after making no summer signings at all.