“Our messaging services went live in 1977 to replace the Telex technology then widely used by banks to communicate instructions related to cross-border transfers. The service remains as relevant today as it was ground-breaking back then, representing the primary communications channel for financial institutions engaged in correspondent banking all around the world, and offering the most secure, cost-effective and reliable way of transmitting financial messages relating to payments, securities, treasury and trade. Since its inception, SWIFT has played a leading role, together with its community, in the standardisation that underpins global financial messaging and its automation. The use of standardised messages and reference data ensures that data exchanged between institutions is unambiguous and machine friendly, facilitating automation, reducing costs and mitigating risks. Through SWIFT, banks, custodians, investment institutions, central banks, market infrastructures and corporate clients, can connect with one another exchanging structured electronic messages to perform common business processes, such as making payments or settling trades.”

Yesterday, YouTuber ‘Thinking Crypto’ posted an interesting video which discusses a link between Ripple and SWIFT; ‘The Global Provider of Secure Financial Messaging Services’ you can see the video for yourself here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlMBewj9seQ Who are SWIFT? SWIFT is an international cooperative and a provider of ‘secure financial messaging services’. They have developed a platform that connects over 11,000 banking and securities companies across over 200 countries. SWIFT has no involvement in the management of accounts or the storage of finances, however they offer a secure financial messaging platform which is able to facilitate global payments and trades. According to SWIFT:I’m sure you agree that this sounds like an almost pre-historic version of what Ripple is wanting to do, it certainly is a pre-blockchain version of transaction verification at least. Thinking Crypto , essentially believes that SWIFT presents Ripple with a huge opportunity. Whether it will take place as an acquisition or a partnership, he’s not so sure, this is something however that not only seems possible due to the amount of money Ripple have generated, but also due to the fact Ripple could reap a number of advantages from this, likewise, so could the 11,000 or so SWIFT customers. What could Ripple achieve with SWIFT? Well that’s pretty clear. SWIFT already have a wealth of customers which Ripple would have the capacity to tap into. By integrating their services like xRapid and xCurrent into this, the whole format of SWIFT could change. Moreover, this would no doubt lead to inevitable XRP integration which in turn would cause the value of the currency to continue increasing, that, does seem to be the ultimate goal for Ripple. The advantages here are almost endless. So, we aren’t claiming that a partnership is taking place, nor that Ripple are going to acquire SWIFT, however, thanks to Thinking Crypto it has been pointed out that SWIFT has a market that provides a very complimentary solution for Ripple’s drive into adoption. The benefits this could provide XRP are astonishing. Ultimately, if it did happen both the value of Ripple as a company, and the XRP currency would see dramatic increases. Of course, this is speculation. Maybe it will get people thinking though.