Ripple lands PNC Ripplenet deal

PNC Bank’s Treasury Management division is joining Ripplenet and using Ripple’s xCurrent system to speed up the way its US business clients get paid invoices by overseas buyers.

“The addition of a top US bank like PNC on RippleNet fuels the network’s positive momentum. RippleNet has grown to more than 100 financial institutions and continues to expand steadily each month. It has also recently expanded its reach to over 40 countries and six continents,” says Ripple.

But the American banking giant has no plans to use the cryptocurrency XRP or xRapid to carry out payments, Asheesh Birla, Ripple’s Senior Vice President for Product Management told Reuters. “Banks aren’t going to be the first adopters of xRapid,” Birla said. He added it was more targeted towards emerging markets than the US.

Coming soon

A Ripple executive recently announced that the company was close to launching its xRapid tool that helps banks speed up transactions by using XRP.

“I am very confident that in the next one month or so you will see some good news coming in where we launch the product live in production,” said Head of Regulatory Relations for Asia Pacific and Middle East Sagar Sarbhai in an interview with CNBC.

Sarbhai explained that xRapid uses XRP as a way a bridge between currencies which will allow payment firms and financial institutions to process cross-border transactions in less time. For example, traditionally if a bank needs to make a transaction that involves converting US dollars to Indian rupees it would require pre-funded local currency accounts. However, with xRapid, the process could be much faster because it converts the dollar to XRP and then back to rupees once in India.