Ripple has struck a deal with the Saudi Central Bank over a pilot programme on the startup’s tech
Distributed ledger startup Ripple has struck a deal with Saudi Arabia’s central bank over the starup’s tech. The deal between the Saudi Central Bank is the second one between Ripple and any central bank as it follows a similar deal between Ripple and the Bank of England, the U.K.’s central bank in 2017. The latest collaboration between Saudi Central Bank and the startup is a pilot programme, under which banks in the Middle East country will try the company’s tech. The announcement in this regard first came from CEO Brad Garlinghouse last week at the Blockchain Connect Conference in San Francisco.
Ripple said that this ground-breaking pilot program is the first of its kind to be launched by a central bank. Participating banks from the [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] will use xCurrent to instantly settle payments sent into and out of the country, with greater transparency and lower costs.
The latest product from Ripple – xCurrent – has already gained popularity among reputed financial institutions. Among the top names that are carrying out tests on the startup’s technology, is Santander, which is already in the process of rolling out a mobile payments app that uses the xCurrent tech, which will be initially released in Spain, Brazil, the U.K. and Poland.
The announcement also follows news that UAE Exchange, a major remittance company in the United Arab Emirates, had signed on with Ripple to use the startup’s RippleNet product to manage cross-border payments.
Apart from the Saudi Central Bank, remittance giant Western Union, is also conducting tests of the Ripple’s tech. According to information, the company is testing payments using XRP.
Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek said that the company is looking especially in the processing settlement and working capital optimisation, also in the regulation part, on the compliance part on the blockchain capabilities.
In 2016, Ripple had said that it was working with Western Union, though the remittance company didn’t comment at the time.
