Ripple Signs Deal with Giant UAE Exchange for Blockchain-Powered International Payments

UAE will now join the RippleNet network, which uses blockchain technology to send real-time international payments at very high speeds.

Promoth Manghat, CEO of UAE Exchange said, “Incorporating Ripple’s blockchain technology into our payments systems will bring customers an enhanced, new payments experience. The early adoption of this game-changing technology allows us to offer a competitive service, as it will have an impact on the speed and cost of cross-border transactions.”

The UAE Exchange said it has a 6.75 percent share of the $575 billion global provisions market, with ambitions to take on 10 percent by 2020. It has 800 branches in more than 30 countries. This makes it the largest UAE-based exchange to work blockchain into its daily operations.

Champion of blockchain 

UAE Exchange CEO Manghat has long been a serious supporter of blockchain technology. This has been made even more obvious through the collaboration with Ripple. “Personally, I am a big champion of Blockchain and foresee its disruptive potential not merely in the financial services industry but across a gamut of industries. Fundamentally what Blockchain does is establishing transparency and trust and thereby reducing transaction costs … On the face of it, the average consumer may never know about blockchain, but indirectly he will reap the benefits of the efficiencies it brings forth across industries in his everyday life.” Manghat said in an interview in October 2017 with Arabian Business.

Dilip Rao, global head of infrastructure innovation at Ripple, is also happy about the new partnership with the UAE Exchange.

“This new partnership is clearly a major win for Ripple, which aims to shake off the skepticism coupled with the new year’s bear market,” he said, according to the Business Insider.

Adopted more by payment networks, Ripple, with its own unit of payment called XRP, rose in popularity at the end of 2017. This was due to support from 100 banks including Japanese and Korean credit card companies.

Ripple has increasingly been adopted by payment networks and banks, including UBS and Santander for its settlement technology.

Ripple hit a record high of $3.84 earlier in 2018, then slumping last week. At the time of writing Ripple, is worth about $1.03.

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Ripple founder Chris Larsen’s net worth, who owned 5.19 billion XRP and a 17 percent share in the company, climbed to $59.9 billion during Ripple’s high, a fortune larger than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's. However, the dip made his net worth drop significantly.

The Ripple network was established in 2012 and acts as a system for authenticating and recording various assets’ transactions including its own XRP.

Ripple targets to sign up customers to use its system for verifying and recording transactions of all kinds of assets as compared to being used as a kind of payment.