Ripple Launches xRapid at Swell

Ripple announced the much-anticipated launch of its xRapid product for international payments on Monday, as the status of its currency XRP remains a question.

"The industry needs to mature and be less dependent on speculative trading and more dependent on solving real problems for real customers. We've been talking about how Ripple intends to do that and now we have more and more proof in the pudding. It's a big deal for Ripple, it's a big deal for the XRP community, and it's big deal for crypto."

That Ripple could be launching xRapid within the next month.

Sarbhai said Ripple had put years of work into xRapid at that point, and a launch in the near future was inevitable.

Ripple October 1, 2018.xRapid aims to do for international transactions what xCurrent is already doing for banks: cutting out the middleman and speeding up transaction times using blockchain technology built on Ethereum's network.

The transfer of money between countries can take days, and xRapid reduces that time to minutes.

There are still intermediaries that a transaction has to pass through when using xRapid to be converted back to a country's respective fiat currency, but it still takes far less time using the service than with current methods according to Ripple.

A press release on the launch states that xRapid will be implemented by multiple payment providers around the world, including MercuryFX, Cuallix, and Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union.

Catalyst is a credit union serving over 1,400 customers in the U.S. and will use xRapid to facilitate cross-border payments for its members.

Ripple is moving forward regardless, and the tests of xRapid have proven promising.