HDFC Bank Joins Ripple's Payment Network - Confirms Ripple's MD

Last year, an interview with Jay Kim, Marcus Treacher, Global Head of Strategic Accounts at Ripple, informed that HDFC, India’s largest private bank, has onboarded onto its global payment network 'RippleNet'. 

HDFC is also among known banks, that helps start-ups to kick-off their respective business models with its initiative 'SmartUp', and manage their finances. 

Now in a latest, Ripple's Managing Director of MENA, Navin Gupta, has officially confirmed that HDFC Bank Limited has joined RippleNet. RippleNet is a network of institutional payment-providers such as banks and money services businesses that use solutions developed by Ripple to provide a frictionless experience to send money globally. 

In a webinar (Tweet below) on Saturday last week, Navin Gupta, said "But we have some special news for you that I would like to share with you all. I’m pleasesd to announce that HDFC Bank, largest private sector bank in India has joined RippleNet. They will be a key receiving partner into India and our team is incredibly exited to work with them."

HDFC Bank (largest private sector bank in India) joins RippleNet. Announced at Swell MENA August 12 2020.

⁦@MoonLamboio⁩ ⁦@sentosumosaba⁩ ⁦@stedas⁩ ⁦@DiepSanh⁩ ⁦@HamEggsnSam⁩ ⁦@BankXRP⁩ ⁦@LeoHadjiloizou⁩ pic.twitter.com/80MUdz7RJO

— Louis Marriott (@LouisMarriott1) September 18, 2020

Notably,  other Indian banks - Axis Bank and Federal Bank are already partners of  RippleNet. 

Interestingly, earlier this year when supreme court quashed the RBI's ban on cryptocurrencies, HDFC was among few banks  who were arbitrarily declining to process crypto transactions saying that the bank was waiting for instructions to lift the ban from the central bank.

Founded in 2012 as OpenCoin, Ripple is a US-based technology company developing the XRP cryptocurrency and distributed ledger technology alongside a digital payment network for financial transactions.

To recall, in December 2017 Ripple's cryptocurrency (XRP) outpace Ethereum to become the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap for a while.

Ripple To Giveaway 2 Bn of Its Cryptocurrency (XRP) Worth $880 Million To Entire India

In order to beat Bitcoin in cryptocurrency dominance in India, world’s 3rd largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Ripple (XRP), has planned to giveaway two billion of Ripple in entire India, announced Asheesh Birla, Vice President of Product at Ripple.

Speaking at the panel on Scaling and Digital Disruption in Fintech, Birla further elaborated that Ripple "...looked early on at India, and we looked at two billion people - a huge market. And we decided, how do you get two billion people onto Ripple? Do we give the currency away to every Indian, that’s like two billion - just give it away?”

The company envisions to make it possible that Ripple (XRP) become the most dominant cryptocurrency in India and to encourage Indians to use the cryptocurrency -- a planned move that will streamline the process of XRP in the country.

Earlier this year, a nationwide survey revealed that people in India had invested in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies worth whopping US $3.5 billion.

With today’s rate of XRP at around $0.45, two billion XRP would cost around $880 million, and based on the all-time high price of XRP, which could be achieved once again in the next rally of the cryptocurrency market, two billion XRP tokens could easily be worth worth roughly $7 billion.

However, given the difficulty involving the process of distributing XRP to billions of people in the region and the cost involved, Ripple has decided to secure strategic partnerships with the country’s largest banks. It is to be noted that, in last November, India's Axis Bank started using RippleNet, a Ripple’s blockchain-based payment platform, as a means of making cross-border transactions.

“That was one idea. But then we realised that if you get the top three banks in India onto Ripple, you get 80 percent of the market share. And then we looked at – where’s the future? And so we realised in the next five years, one billion people will become banked in India, but they’ll be banked through their phone. So then we started targeting mobile phone providers and telcos. And so now, I think that in our pipeline we have probably 50 percent of the market in India, either integrated onto Ripple or in the deal, in the sort of pipeline to be signed to India.”

Ripple had begun spreading its business in Indian subcontinent by setting up its office in Mumbai, in September 2017.

India is currently the world's third largest economy in terms of real GDP after the USA and the People's Republic of China.

If Ripple succeeds in building a network of banks and billions of individual users in India, the liquidity network of the Ripple blockchain-based xRapid and xCurrent could be more valuable and most importantly, more efficient than banking systems.

Used by companies such as UniCredit, UBS and Santander, Ripple has been increasingly adopted by banks and payment networks as settlement infrastructure technology.

Via - The Currency Analytics | Coin Insider

Ripple is Now 2nd Most Valuable Cryptocurrency in the World

As year-2017 is close to say good bye, Ripple overtake Ethereum as the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

XRP, as Ripple’s token is called, surpassed $1 for the first time Dec. 21 and quintupled its market cap to more than $50 billion between Wednesday and Friday of that week.

Overall, Ripple has risen 28,000% this year to become the world’s second most valuable cryptocurrency just after Bitcoin.

After the Friday’s price jump, ripple’s market cap hit $73.6 billion at 11:04 GMT, briefly leaving ethereum $3 billion behind.

While bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies are known for being decentralized, ripple owners are well-known, and the cryptocurrency is centralized.

The ripple cryptocurrency, XPR token, operates under parent company Ripple, a privately funded firm based in San Francisco, California.

Currently, Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrencies by market cap contributing 41.5% of the overall crypto market valuation, followed by Ripple, which contributes 12.4% and Ethereum which is now on the third spot contributes 12.3%.

One of the major reasons attributed to the surge in Ripple’s price over the past one month is the testing of Ripple technology by some Japanese and South Korean banks. This news itself has fueled a lot of buying interest amongst investors and the daily volumes are shooting record highs.