SADAD Electronic Payment System B.S.C., a leading Manama-based payment getaway channel in Bahrain, is reportedly signing up for Ripple’s xRapid product for remittance servicing and cross-border money transfers. The revelation is based on one of the company’s exhibitor brochures shown at the GITEX 38th Technology Week held in the Dubai World Trade Center during the last week. Furthermore, the company that has deployed more than 1,000 kiosks so far in the Middle Eastern Kingdom is reportedly planning to expand its services to offer a crypto wallet app to store digital assets for its customers.

Another leading financial service company in the Middle East seems to have joined the ever-expanding RippleNet, Ripple’s decentralized global payment network. The news broke through a tweet made by an XRP supporter and went viral during the night of Oct. 19 until Oct. 20.

As of press time, no official comment about the announcement has been made by any of the companies.

SADAD Electronic Payment System, an ancillary payment service provider, is seemingly embracing blockchain technology and diving deep into the crypto sphere. The company already enables customers to make multiple payments through either a mobile app or SADAD kiosks available in 1,000 locations around the Kingdom of Bahrain. Customers can use the service to instantly pay for all sorts of bills (such as utilities, phone bills, or even University of Bahrain tuitions), top up fuel cards, pay for multimedia and game vouchers, and send remittances to India for noncitizen Indian workers living in Bahrain.

The kiosks, which are automated touch-screen banking machines, allow customers to send cash to India while offering competitive exchange rates and a lower fee structure, compared with that of other remittance service companies operating in the Kingdom.

In fact, one of the three exhibitor brochures that were presented by the company at the GITEX 38th Technology Week, which took place from Oct. 14 to Oct. 18 in Dubai, and that was featured in the GITEX 2018 website confirms that SADAD is adopting Ripple’s xRapid for “blockchain money transfer solutions.” SADAD hopes that adopting the latest technological breakthrough will help the company promote instant payments and near real-time transaction settlements.

xRapid as a Low-Cost Liquidity Solution for Cross-Border Payment Providers

xRapid is defined by Ripple as a liquidity source for payment providers and remittance service companies, which intends to lower operational costs linked to payments requiring pre-funded local currency accounts (nostro accounts). The product that went live earlier this month is offering on-demand liquidity by means of Ripple’s digital asset, XRP, as a liquidity option to service cross-border payments.

Ripple reported that xRapid was not only commercially available last Oct. 1 but also was moving into production with many corporate clients, including three cross-border payment service companies (MercurryFX, Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union, and Cuallix).

The other revelation that Blokt found out about while examining another brochure exhibited by SADAD at GITEX 2018 is that the company is seemingly integrating cryptocurrency support to its “mWallet” product. The company defined the new service as a crypto mobile wallet app to manage different digital currencies and create your own one. No further explanation was given about the product and what digital assets will be supported by SADAD’s cryptocurrency wallet. However, the latter is a strong move toward giving Bahrain residents exposure to digital assets.