All previous 3 part article combined into one complete article as a coherent whole. Easy read

Several Australian banks have been keen supporters of Ripple as far back as July 2015.

What makes this so significant? There are several reasons as to why this has so much significance. I will try to detail those reasons.

1. Test bed for other global financial banking institutions.

Many of the Australian banks have already completed test conducted on Ripples blockchain's technology. With an emphasis on the following,

• Transfers of fund between banks.
• Transfer of funds a cross borders.
• Eliminating " Nostro Accounts"- which is the delay in liquidity when transferring funds from one account to another.
  Nearly all test conducted were completed successfully. What were the banks main objectives?
• Reducing the cost of International banking
• Freeing up liquidity.
• Improving the bottom line.
  This is as simple as you could ever get. No grandiose ideals here. Simplicity at its finest.

2. Testing the viability of the blockchain with the view to having the Central bank create it's own Australian coin or a digital version of fiat currency backed by the Reserve bank.

In the middle of 2015 the banks held off from large scaling due to the volatility of the crypto market and also to the fact that cryptos were not recognized as an asset. However, the banks did acknowledge that the technology worked and that transactions could be carried out between two banks without the need of the Reserve Bank of Australia acting as middle man to verify that a transaction was made between the two banks. Effectively eliminating the need for the Reserve bank to be involved, solely due to the fact that a shared ledger between banks would eliminate this.

3. Potential to make a considerable amount in savings and profits.

• Because the blockchain is decentralized and has a shared ledger, this would remove the need for banks to have a huge array of servers to keep track of its ledger. Transactions are verified on the blockchain. It would still require some servers but no where as many that it currently uses.

• In regards to Ripple as an example. Transaction speeds of 1500 per second and minimal transactions fees are what makes Ripple so attractive to banks. Especially when compared to the old SWIFT system that banks currently use. The SWIFT system would now be consider ancient, yet still processes around $5 Trillion USD per day. which is why Ripple is being viewed as a replacement for SWIFT and why Ripple has the potential to exponentially increase in value in 2018! Imagine if Ripple was to take all $5 Trillion USD worth from Swift!

• Transactions can be carried out in real time, almost instantly. Which helps banks with its capital funds as funds are not left in limbo, languishing, awaiting confirmation at the receiving end. Which could take up to three or more days. This frees up capital that would otherwise be doing nothing in terms of value.

• Simplified cross border transactions. Eliminates the need for a middle man as Ripple itself becomes the middle man to facilitate the transfer of funds at virtually no cost to both the sender and receiver. What use to cost both the banks and customers will now be done at absolutely minimal cost to both parties. However I am certain banks would still charge some cost.

• With the current global financial infrastructure and the transferring of funds through differing internal books, there has generally been poor co-ordination and settlement of funds between banks.

  

• This in turn has created a system that transactions between banks, often has been error prone. These errors, globally, contribute to an error rate of 12.7 %, costing banks globally a staggering $1.6 Trillion USD in processing cross border transactions. Even reducing this figure by half would ensure that banks globally would stand to make considerable cost savings.

• This is where the beauty of Ripple comes to play on a huge scale. Not only does Ripple eliminate many of the errors but has the potential to eliminate them completely. $ 1.6 trillion USD is virtually double what the cryptomarkets was worth at it's peak earlier this year.

• Australian banks had a regulatory obligation to report or flag cross border transactions that exceeded $10,000 AUD (reduced to $5,000 AUD for some of the banks) , as a way of preventing money laundering from criminal activities and disrupting the terrorist networks to particular Countries. Many banks turned a blind eye and basically ignored it statutory reporting responsibilities for three years. This was a failure on an epic scale and had a huge potential to undermine the National security.

• Again Ripple will provide a solution. Using it's blockchain, any transactions exceeding the $10,000 threshold ( including transactions slightly under if a pattern emerges of constantly staying under the said threshold) is automatically flagged to be processed and checked by the National Security Agency. Which frees up banks from having to report constantly as it would simply provide Ripples blockchain's ledger to show all the transactions that it has conducted over a period of time. This again has the potential for banks to make substantial cost savings and also comply with the laws as it now stands.

• Banks generally won't hold large amounts of Ripple nor will it trade on open coin exchanges. They will source Ripple ( could have a flow on effect with other coins) through an intermediary companies called "Liquidity Providers". These providers will buy huge volumes from exchanges. Banks will hedge against this volume and buy according to an agreed price over a fixed time period. Which eliminates the volatility factor with the cryptomarkets. If the market goes up, it make a large profit as it has a locked in price to buy large amounts at the lower price. This also removes risk particularly if the markets are bullish.

4. What Ripple will bring to the table in regards to Australian banks and how global banking has had a keen eye on developments here over the last two years.

• Australian banks have played a major role over the last couple of years. Many global financial organisations around the world have kept an interesting eye on all the developments here.
  During the middle of 2017 several banks conducted further test as a continuation of test completed in 2015. However, these test were carried out on a much larger scale and with actual client funds. Westpac bank made transfers between Australian and New Zealand banks. The test proved Ripple was extremely successful. Further test will be conducted on an even more grander scale with other banks around the world. Anyone within Australia and New Zealand knows only too well the cost associated with sending funds between the two countries. Ridiculously high when using traditional methods of transfers using wire methods such as Western Union or even within your own bank account over the internet.
• Ripple provides banks with the ability to network with a multitude of other banks. With Ripples " Interledger protocol" it is able to be the interface between two much different banking ledgers and facilitate the transaction between the two. It has been something that has been quite difficult to manage by banks previously, so there has been limited corridors between banks to actually do this. This has the ability that all Five major banks within Australia are able to openingly communicate with each other. Historically banks would be reluctant to be in open discussion with it competitors.
• Ripple will have a profound affect within Australia. It's technology will be transformative, provide stability and overall market confidence. Savings made by banks will hopefully be passed on to consumers, which will be such a positive thing, especially after many customers over the years feel that they have been ripped off by banks that have traditionally gouged clients .
• Ripple presents banks with an exciting long term value proposition and the ability to reach out globally.
  Ripple offers infrastructure technology that enables banks to move and transfer fund instantly and directly to other banking institutions around the world, optionally sourcing liquidity from third party liquidity providers in a way that is both transparent and confirmable.
  Ripple minimizes the risk of settlement and allows bank the opportunity consolidate nostro accounts , resulting in lower total cost for transaction settlements.
• Over 75 banks around the world have now jumped on the Ripple band wagon. So as of January 2018, these banks will start to interact. Companies like American Express have also joined Ripple which gives a possible insight into how such companies are adapting to possible changes coming in the not to far future.

This is Ripples real ability? To act as an interface between the old world of banking and the evolving new world of future banking!

Finally. The exciting potential of all this new technology lies not only in the cost savings to banks and how it can extract those savings but to the creation of future business models and a completely new way of conducting business into the future.
I would like to quote a statement made by a follow Steemian @nathen007

"Ripple is an interesting example of an interface between the old and new. I read many hard core crypto geeks guffawing at its attempt to get into bed with the traditional financial institutions but in my opinion that's a good thing as it proves the technologies usefulness and acceptance into modern financial practices."

Will you and the rest of the world be ready for a new form of control, manipulated by the very banking system that the original vision from Satoshi Nakamoto warned of?

I will be writing an article on why I believe the banking institutions in its current form will not survive 20 years into the future. Why Ripple will be a great investment for the next two years but beyond that, how eventually it too will be superseded by a better crypto technology. How banks will be no more that centralized stores of value.Check it out soon.

Price prediction for Ripple at the end of 2018.