Coincidental with the funding, Ripple has announced five new banks as members of the network, including Standard Chartered, National Australia Bank (NAB), Mizuho Financial Group (MHFG), Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) and Shanghai Huarui Bank.
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Blockchain startup Ripple, one of several groups working with banks to create standards for the distributed ledger technology, has landed millions more in funding, with Standard Chartered and Accenture among new investors jumping on board the blockchain bandwagon. “We’re thrilled to have these world-class investors joining forces with us to help make this vision a reality”, he said.
Daniel Aranda, managing director of Ripple’s European operations, said the online, decentralised nature of blockchain opens the door to a global network where banks and customers can move money almost instantly, while traditional methods of payment clearing can take days.
Alex Manson, Global Head, Transaction Banking, Standard Chartered, stated that the investment is part of the bank’s commitment towards digitization. By leveraging Ripple’s technology, financial service and compliance expertise, the bank can co-develop more use cases that will better serve customers and their ecosystems in a changing marketplace.
With the new cash it will hire new staff internationally, and grow customers and the number of strategic partnerships which already counts 15 of the top 50 banks in the world. Ripple has received a total of over $93 million in funding. “But the benefits of DFT could go further, with real-time reporting capabilities and fraud detection for example, having disruptive applications across industries”.
Ripple’s distributed financial technology allows for banks around the world to directly transact with each other without the need for a central counterpart or correspondent, claims the company. “Following the recent creation of our joint venture, SBI Ripple Asia and in light of incredible customer growth, we are very pleased to increase our investment in Ripple”, he said.
Ripple provides global financial settlement solutions to ultimately enable the world to exchange value like it already exchanges information – giving rise to an Internet of Value (IoV).
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Spanish bank Santander said earlier this year it was using Ripple in a pilot programme for staff who wanted to send money overseas. “This makes SCB the first bank in Thailand to pilot worldwide money transfer services using Ripple’s blockchain solutions, with due diligence, conducted by Digital Ventures, whose mission is to seek new investment and development of innovative FinTech to elevate SCB’s customer service quality”.
