As reported by the Fintech Times on Oct. 16, the cooperation between the two firms will see Ripple’s over 200 existing clients reciprocally access Finastra’s extensive banking network, which includes 48 of the top 50 banks globally.
London-based Finastra – the third-largest financial services technology firm in the world – has partnered with Ripple to grant its customers access to the RippleNet blockchain network.
Finastra was formed in 2017 after a merger between Misys and D+H, with the development hailed at the time as the establishment of “a global behemoth in the market for financial software.”
Partnership with a financial software “global behemoth”
According to the Fintech Times report, Finastra customers and existing RippleNet partners will be able to transact cross-border with end-to-end tracking and transparent oversight of fees, delivery time and status.
Customers will be hosted on Ripple’s cloud solution in order to improve speed, as well as having the option to use Ripple’s XRP-powered On-Demand Liquidity solution, which purportedly offers a 3-second settlement time for international payments.
In a statement, Riteesh Singh – Senior Vice President, FMS, Finastra – said that Finastra’s collaboration with Ripple reflects the company’s “belief that the future of finance is open.”
He added that the use of blockchain technology would be of particular benefit for clients in jurisdictions where the costs of corresponding banking are high.
High-profile clients, yet community controversies persist
This August, PNC – the United States’ eighth-largest bank, with almost $400 billion in assets – became the country’s first to start using the RippleNet blockchain network for cross-border payments.
With the XRP token’s price nonetheless continuing to lag, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has responded to a host of Ripple-related controversies in recent interviews, telling Morgan Creek Digital Assets co-founder Anthony Pompliano on Oct. 9 that the company’s transparency had “opened us up to attack.”
In a nod to the ongoing concerns over Ripple’s handling of XRP token sales, Garlinghouse emphasized that Ripple sells XRP at 10 basis points of daily market volume noting that 99.9% of XRP volume is not connected to the company’s sales.
Ripple Joins ISO Global Standards Body on Cross-Border Payments
Ripple has become a member of the ISO 20022 standards body, which is driving a new data standard for payments and data messaging between global financial institutions.
The company claims to be the first distributed ledger technology (DLT) focused member of the group, which includes a number of international commercial and central banks along with payment processing entities like SWIFT and Visa.
The route to an international standard
ISO 20022 proposes a single standardized approach in methodology, process and repository to enable communication and interoperability between all global financial organizations.
While convergence into a single standard is the long-term objective, in the interim several existing legacy standards need to co-exist and share information. ISO takes common data points from the models of individual institutions and groups them into a standardized format, which can be shared between systems.
The standard has already been adopted in 70 countries, and it is estimated that by 2023, 87% of global financial transactions will be supported by ISO 20022.
Is Ripple crypto’s Jekyll and Hyde?
Ripple’s membership of the standards body marks a further validation of cryptocurrency and DLT in the world of traditional finance. It also allows Ripple and its customers to have a say in the future direction of cross-border payments.
Adherence to the ISO 20022 standard also simplifies counterparty connections and reduces associated costs.
Ripple seems to be constantly walking a fine line between respectability and suspicion in the eyes of the public.
As Cointelegraph has recently reported, for every new high profile partnership there is a market dilution of XRP by Ripple or its former executives, along with ongoing allegations of XRP being an unlicensed securities sale.
