The Central Bank of Saudi Arabia partners with Ripple to test its technology

The distributed book of the starup Ripple reached an agreement with the central bank of Saudi Arabia on a pilot program that will allow the banks in the country to test the technology of the company.

Announced yesterday, the pilot with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority marks the second central bank to work with the startup, after the Bank of England, the central bank of the United Kingdom, started working with Ripple last year.

The news of the last agreement first appeared this week in the wake of comments from CEO Brad Garlinghouse at the Blockchain Connect Conference in San Francisco.

"This innovative pilot program is the first of its kind launched by a central bank.Participating banks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will use xCurrent to instantly settle payments to and from the country, with greater transparency and lower costs, "said Ripple.

That banks in Saudi Arabia are looking for xCurrent as a footprint for pilot tests may not be surprising given the recent interest in the Ripple product by other notable financial institutions.

Earlier this month, it was announced that Santander is in the process of implementing a mobile payments application that uses xCurrent technology (which does not depend on Ripple's XRP token), with Spain, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Poland serving as initial markets for that launch.

The announcement also comes after the UAE Exchange, a major remittance company in the UAE, has registered with the startup's RippleNet product to manage cross-border payments.

Separated from the news from Saudi Arabia there are reports of tests being carried out by the giant of remittances Western Union, which confirmed in a call yesterday that it is piloting the technology of the startup. Fortune reported today that, for a spokesperson, the company is testing payments using XRP.

"We are especially looking for optimization of processing and working capital, also in the regulatory part, in the compliance part of the blockchain capabilities," Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.

Ripple said that in 2015 he was working with Western Union, although the remittance company did not comment at that time.

It is likely that the currency of Ripple, XRP, continues to rise after these alliances, it is not the first time that is associated with some giant to take blokchain to a new sector. With these results, trust is consolidated in the cryptoactive base, which means that more people will want to invest in it since these agreements can mean the support that people are looking for in cryptocurrencies.

There may not be a specific central bank of Ripple or cryptocurrencies in general, but there are sure to be and there will be large companies working with them. Although in the end, it's all about attitude.