Everything we know about who’s using Ripple’s most XRP-intensive product

Ripple’s xRapid cross-border payments product, which uses XRP, is in play with 12 money transfer services and banks. Here’s the list.

Feb 22, 2019

8 min read

Is XRP the standard for international money transfer? A fast, low-fee digital currency designed for cross-border payments, it’s too soon to tell whether XRP will usurp SWIFT, the 800-pound gorilla in the space. However, XRP is definitely getting more and more traction lately: a growing number of high-profile companies are testing it—and some are fully committed to using it in their payment services.

This is significant because there’s been some confusion over who, exactly, is using or even testing XRP. Ripple, which holds a lot of XRP in escrow, has been somewhat vague when it comes to confirming who’s using xRapid, a product that exclusively uses XRP. Its other two international money-transfer solutions (xCurrent and xVia) also use XRP, but support other cryptocurrencies.

Last month, in an interview with Fortune, CEO Brad Garlinghouse said, “Not many months ago, the media was saying no one will use XRP, which made for good skeptical headlines. Today, you can’t say that as people are starting to use XRapid because it’s better, faster and cheaper.”

Garlinghouse is confident that banks will start to use xRapid by the end of 2019. So far, the only companies using it are smaller businesses that offer cross-border payments, including money remittance services and one bank. But with the amount of hype thrown around XRP, it can be hard to find out which services are actually using XRP, and not just one of the other services.

Here then is a complete list of Ripple partnerships that are using or testing XRP with xRapid:

Cuallix

Based in the US and Mexico, Cuallix is a financial services institution that provides credit and payment processing solutions. It offers credit loans, car insurance and more importantly, international payment processing. It’s also a member of SWIFT, the global payments messaging service that orchestrates a lot of international payments between financial institutions.

Since xRapid went live in October 2018, Cuallix has been one of the first companies to use it, having been one of Ripple’s long-standing partners. It joined RippleNet in October 2017 and had been testing xRapid before it became commercially available in 2018. At Ripple’s Swell conference in San Francisco, Cuallix CFO Nicolas Palacios said that using xRapid was faster and more transparent.

Type of integration: Using XRP

Mercury FX

Mercury FX is a money remittance business aimed at businesses or high-net worth clients. It’s using XRP to send payments to and from Mexico and is reportedly setting up a payments channel with the Philippines in the next few weeks.

Mercury FX recently made its largest payment yet across RippleNet, sending £3,521.67 ($4552) from the UK to Mexico. Speaking at Ripple Regionals 2019, in London, Mercury FX CEO Alastair Constance said the xRapid service was an improvement over SWIFT, by being faster and cheaper. It’s one of RIpple’s main partners.

Type of integration: Using XRP

Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union

Texas-based Catalyst Corporate is a financial institution used by more than 1,400 credit unions in the U.S. It provides a range of services, including international payments, for these credit unions and is set to introduce a new service called Currentz, which will use XRP. It partnered with Ripple in 2018 and it, too, will focus on the Mexico payments channel. At the Swell conference, Brad Ganey, senior vice president, criticized current methods of making international payments for being too cumbersome.

Type of integration: Using XRP

IDT

IDT is a telecommunications company which has an international calling and money transfer business called BOSS Revolution. It already uses digital assets to swap currencies. IDT signed up with Ripple at the same time as Mercury FX, in January, 2018, to pilot xRapid for settling transactions.

Since then, senior vice president Alfredo O'Hagan has said the 30-day xRapid trial exceeded the company’s expectations, and that it’s going to launch a new product that uses XRP soon. (It’s also listed in a Ripple leaflet on xRapid as a partner.).

Type of integration: Using XRP

Euro Exim Bank

London-based Euro Exim Bank is focused on global trade finance and has worked with SWIFT for 20 years. It is the first bank to fully implement xRapid, having successfully done so for low-value trades in jurisdictions that tend to have higher-than-average costs. It also uses xCurrent for cross-border payments.

"Global payments look set to be a $2-trillion industry by 2020, but is still hampered by high fees, best rate setting, risk of fraud, speed, regulation, multiple banking relationships and cashflow impact," head of compliance and operations, Graham Bright, told Trade Finance Global, adding, "Distributed ledger technology is envisioned to resolve these issues and again offer cost efficiencies, speed and immutability concerning each transaction."

Type of integration: Using XRP

SendFriend

SendFriend is a payments service for sending money to the Philippines. It partnered with Ripple in November, 2018 and has recently announced it will be going live with xRapid in Q1, 2019. CEO David Lighton said, in a Ripple blog, “Through our partnership, we are bringing our customers a next-generation, blockchain payment solution that leverages XRP to address many of the efficiency and equity problems with existing remittances. For them, that means cheaper and faster payments.”

Type of integration: Expected to be using XRP by Q1, 2019

SBI Holdings

SBI Holdings is a Japanese financial services company, based in Tokyo, which has launched an exchange that supported Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP at launch. It plans to integrate with xRapid so that payments providers can use its virtual currencies exchange platform when exchanging XRP for Yen and vice versa. SBI Holdings has also created an app for cross-border payments, called MoneyTap, which uses xCurrent, one of Ripple’s solutions that doesn’t use XRP.

In Japan, SBI Holdings has partnered with R3, a blockchain consortium which uses XRP in one of its main products, known as the Corda platform. The President of SBI Holdings, Yoshitaka Kitao, even praised R3’s recent partnership with Ripple’s competitor SWIFT and said XRP’s market cap is likely to grow bigger than Bitcoin’s.