Ripple – as the company behind it, are delivering a global-scale payment and financial settlement solution making it possible for anybody-everywhere to exchange values with the speed and cost on how we exchange information and data nowadays.

Ripple solutions lower the total cost of settlement by enabling banks to transact directly, without correspondent banks, and with real-time certainty of settlement. Its purpose takes form more and more everyday as major banks are joining on the ‘new cross border’ payment system.

It happens very often that when individuals hear about Ripple [XRP], people tend to overlook the Ripple Network and see it only as a cryptocurrency. The network is much more complex than just a virtual currency as it could showcase a platform that allows anybody to transfer money in any other currency in a very short time period – speaking in second! This could lead to elimination of the more traditional platforms and systems used until now like SWIFT or Western Union.

The alternative proposed is the use of XRP as a common currency underlying all money transfers between different currencies (USD is currently the most common currency). Not only are transaction fees much lower to convert from one currency to XRP and back, but transfers take a maximum of 4 seconds to execute and verify. Quite a few global banks have already started embracing Ripple as it saves them a lot of money in the long run by avoiding exchange fees.

If you compare the digital currency and its network with another cryptocurrency, Ripple does have its advantages. Best to take for example – Bitcoin (the leader by market capitalization whose price just rocketed to $7,400).

Transactions take only maximum of 4 second using XRP’s network which has the bonus on top of it with lower transaction fees.

All the 100 billion XRP that it’s possible to use on the platform already exist. While they’re not all on the market – a few are released into the market every month to avoid flooding – there is no use mining as there is nothing of value to be added, unlike in more traditional cryptocurrencies.

Its marketing strategy defines its unique platform – Ripple’s partnering up with banks and find use of ‘itself’ from financial entities reassures the standpoint of investors, while digital currencies normally are competitors of banks.

To compare the benefits of using Ripple and XRP for International Payments, let’s take a look at International Payment Servicing – Cost Break Down

If on the chart Ripple is included, the difference is easy to notice:

Despite its position now on the market cap list, its price and so on – Ripple on the long term [if plans ‘roll’ how they should] could become one of the best assets to have on your share. A change could be made through Ripple.