Ripple was recently hailed for its services by a Bank of America (BoA) executive in a recent interview that focused on emerging technologies. Julie Harris, the bank’s head of global banking & digital strategy, noted that Ripple has demonstrated a strong value proposition as a partner after it passed the Bank of America compliance procedures.

The podcast interview was published by the bank and went on to further highlight key details in Ripple’s fundamental potential when it comes to integration with traditional finance,

“…it’s not about our platform and our capabilities, it’s about you as a client and the infrastructure you have and the ability for us to integrate, whether that’s with platforms and capabilities that we built or partnerships that we have with the likes of Ripple or Swift.”

She went on to say,

“These are Fintechs that we're partnering with. They've come through all of our rigor of legal and compliance and we're able to leverage our banking as a platform to deliver that to you. So I really think the future is all about client experience and integrated platforms versus siloed products and capabilities.”

Apart from its industry-oriented features, Ripple has managed to convince a highly regulated institution like the Bank of America on its legal certainty as a business in a grey market. Julie Harris, however, did not mention the bank’s position on leveraging Ripple for International payments. So far, the biggest milestone is a pilot project in which Ripple claims are being partly experimented together with the Bank of America.

Notably, the bank also hired a Ripple expert back in 2019 but did not provide any more information on their strategic role. Could this mean the banking giant might leverage RippleNet in the future? This question is yet to be answered clearly by any of the two entities although Ripple has in the past confirmed collaborating with the Bank of America since 2016.

Despite the uncertainty in mainstream adoption, more financial market players are moving to integrate distributed ledgers amid the FinTech frenzy. Given the ongoing financial, technical and legal developments; this narrative also is set to change as more global finance stakeholders eye a first-mover advantage.