Western Union Confirms XRP Integration of Ripple Blockchain Trial

Western Union has formally confirmed that its Ripple-based blockchain trial can embody XRP integration, creating the cash transfer large the most important firm to check XRP in its internal payment flows.

Western Union confirmed rumors regarding the partnership on weekday. Details regarding the trial were slim, however it appeared unlikely that XRP was concerned on condition that most of Ripple’s partners have connected to RippleNet, the company’s personal enterprise blockchain.

However, Ripple later issued a press release to media retailers creating it clear that Western Union can pilot Ripple’s xRapid product, that uses XRP to supply period of time liquidity and scale back the capital needs necessary for monetary establishments to work in rising markets.

“We’ve been testing totally different product with Western Union for a jiffy,” Ripple aforementioned. “We’re excited regarding our work towards a pilot implementation of xRapid, that uses XRP in payment flows.”

Western Union CTO Sheri Rhodes told Yahoo Finance that the 167-year-old firm, that was 1st based as a telegraph company, is fascinated by blockchain technology for a spread of reasons:

“We still explore potential blockchain applications for our business, and that we square measure piloting some settlement tests with Ripple for sure corridors. For blockchain generally, we’re observing areas like dealings process and settlement, capital optimisation, regulative technology, and digital identity. we've a powerful platform and system that job well nowadays, however we have a tendency to still explore and check whether or not these technologies may probably scale back prices and improve the client expertise,” Rhodes aforementioned.

Western Union is that the fifth distinguished firm to check xRapid, a product that has established abundant less fashionable than Ripple’s enterprise blockchain, that has been trialed by over a hundred monetary establishments set across the globe.

That said, 2 of these 5 firms — Western Union and fellow cash transfer large MoneyGram — square measure among the most important names in monetary services, which can seemingly give the emergent product with a powerful vote of confidence as Ripple makes an attempt to plug it to business banks and alternative giant corporations.