The US startup Ripple offers various payment solutions to both large and small corporations. These solutions are designed to save banks and payment service-providers transaction costs and increase transaction speed significantly. Ripple now wants to expand the range of applications for its technology and has announced the company’s next goals in an interview.
Both Ripple and Stellar have set themselves the goal of revolutionizing cross-border payments. The focus is on faster transfers at the lowest possible cost. Ripple has developed and launched various payment solutions such as xRapid and xCurrent. Ripple’s expansion is in full swing and the Ripple network already has more than 200 active members.
Ripple’s blockchain has a transaction throughput of 1,500 transactions per second, making it one of the “fastest” blockchains in the world of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin can currently process about 7 transactions per second. There are ambitious projects on the cryptographic market, such as TON from Telegram, which aims to achieve 60,000 tps and thus compete with Visa and Mastercard.
In order to explore further business areas, Ripple has strengthened its staff team and now wants to enter the credit market. The company is particularly interested in emerging markets where microcredits of 10 USD or less are in demand. Senior Vice President for Product Management, Asheesh Birla, told “Change the Wave” in a podcast that Ripple is currently reviewing market entry conditions in the fast-growing world of microcredits
As a product person, I’m thinking about what’s next. And so while we think about payments as the initial use case for Ripple, I’m thinking about what other cool products can you build that we can take back to our customers – one of them being microloans.
So if you go into parts of the emerging world, a $10 loan is a big deal. It’s called a microloan. I think you could do that blockchain in a way that you couldn’t do [with other technology].
However, Ripple is holding back on further details, so it can only be speculated at this point whether Ripple will participate in an existing platform or launch a new product in this area itself. Furthermore, it is not clear whether Ripple’s native token, XRP, or another software solution will be used.
Ripple plans expansion
Birla further describes that Ripple has hired new employees from various parts of the world, Africa, Southeast Asia or the Middle East to explore new perspectives and to understand and exploit the problems and potential there. There are also discussions about opening another office in another major metropolis:
I have a strong passion for bringing more kinds of diverse talent into Ripple. One thing that I’m focused on is [whether]there is an opportunity to open up another development center for Ripple in another part of America that we can bring job opportunities to and also tap into a resource that’s not fully exhausted like the Bay Area’s engineering talent.
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Especially outside the United States of America, in countries like Latin America and many emerging markets, financial services are desperately needed to improve local conditions and give people a real chance to change their lives. A bank account is a service that many people around the world are deprived of due to high financial demands. Ripple wants to solve this problem.
How fast Ripple can make progress in this area remains to be seen. The price of XRP is still in a downtrend and stands at 0.25 USD at the time of writing.
