R3 and Ripple trial interbank cross-border payments
David Rutter, CEO of R3
R3 and twelve of its blockchain consortium member banks have trialled Ripple’s Digital Asset XRP for interbank cross-border payments.
Using XRP, Ripple says it can enable near real-time value exchange anywhere in the world, providing “liquidity on demand and reducing associated costs”.
David Rutter, CEO of R3, says the prototype “paves the way for a major overhaul of how banks process and settle cross border payments”.
Ripple says XRP has the “fastest” settlement speed, settling in about five seconds or less. The trial introduced XRP to test the feasibility of reducing or retiring the use of current nostro accounts for local currency payouts.
The trial was carried out over the Ripple network in R3’s lab and research centre. R3 member banks involved in the trial include Barclays, BMO Financial Group, CIBC, Intesa Sanpaolo, Macquarie Group, National Australia Bank (NAB), Natixis, Nordea, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Santander, Scotiabank, and Westpac Banking Corporation.
This development follows on from last month when Ripple created the “first” interbank group for global payments based on blockchain.
Recently, Banking Technology looked at R3 and how the project requires a significant amount of time and resources from the banks in the consortium. SEB, for instance, has around ten employees committed to it.
Ten to eight
Ripple has also recently provided its tech to NAB for a blockchain trial. NAB sent AU$10 ($7.6) in a proof-of-concept (PoC) transfer from a NAB’s employee account to another account at CIBC in Canada. It took ten seconds to process.
Earlier this year, Canada’s ATB Financial sent €666.67 to ReiseBank in Germany using Ripple technology, with the transaction completing in eight seconds.
