Ripple Expands Global Payout Coverage of Cross-Border Payments Solution

Ripple has updated its crypto-enabled cross-border payments solution.

The newly enhanced Ripple Payments, formerly known as RippleNet, enables businesses to leverage the blockchain easily for faster, cheaper and more efficient cross-border payments, the provider of enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions said in a Friday (Dec. 8) press release.

“Since the start, Ripple focused on creating products that solve real problems for real customers,” Monica Long, president at Ripple, said in the release. “This evolution of Ripple Payments represents an extension of our long-running work to optimize the cross-border payments experience through transformative technology.”

In one key update, Ripple Payments now offers expanded access to Ripple’s global network of more than 70 crypto and traditional payout markets, providing nearly 100% global payout coverage through a single onboarding, according to the release.

The solution is also being introduced to a broader customer base, including small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), as Ripple has secured more than 30 licenses across the United States, the release said.

Ripple Payments also features new integrations with the XRP Ledger’s native decentralized exchange (XRPL DEX) that improve product performance and lower barriers to entering new markets by tapping into global liquidity options, per the release.

The expanded liquidity options will also allow Ripple to fulfill customers’ liquidity needs on demand, regardless of the currency or the end destination, the release said.

“At Ripple, we’ve long known that payments are unequivocally the ‘killer app’ for digital assets,” Brendan Berry, head of payment products at Ripple, said in the release. “Achieving that vision requires a seamless experience for institutional users to solve real-world problems. With more businesses than ever seeing real utility in blockchain, our goal is to provide our customers with optionality, speed, ease of use and compliance — all in one comprehensive product.”

Blockchain-led innovations around programmability, immutability and global transaction delivery are increasingly pushing the capabilities of the payments industry forward, Pat Thelen, vice president of global account management at Ripple, told PYMNTS in an interview posted in October.

“We see the tokenization of real-world assets as about as exciting as anything out there,” Thelen said. “If you apply the technology to industries that have been around forever and are fraught with manual processes and illiquidity and latency, there are some real opportunities where so much cost can be taken out of the equation. You can get pretty clever as these use cases unfold.”