The Ripple Protocol Comes to Intra-Bank Payments

Fidor Bank in Germany becomes the first bank to introduce Ripple Labs (formerly OpenCoin)’s Ripple real-time global settlement protocol. This first of its kind deployment will make payments between bank individuals and businesses as easy as sending an email.

Munich-based  “Most Innovative Bank 2013” Fidor Bank is the first bank to integrate the Ripple protocol to enable instant payments in any currency between banks.

The German Bank will use Ripple to power inter-bank payments with other institutions as well as intra-bank payments between branches. The open, decentralized payments protocol enables anything of value to be traded through a global value web. The ambition is for Fidor to enable transacting between a growing number of institutions without correspondent banks, fees, time delays or additional integration work.

“Ripple enables us to send money anywhere in the world at no additional cost and through the same customer facing products and relationships we offer today,” said Matthias Kröner, CEO of Fidor Bank AG. “With Ripple, we can deliver a banking experience at a fraction of the time and cost traditionally expected of a financial institution.”

Payments can be made not only in the standard currencies including dollars, yen, euros and more, but payments may also be made in loyalty points, Bitcoin and Ripple Lab’s own virtual currency, ripple.

The internet-based direct bank has a history of supporting virtual currencies and has worked with Payward Ltd. and Bitcoin Deutschland GmbH, which both operate virtual currency exchanges. Payward’s exchange also supports the ripple currency.

The official launch will take place later this year.