Ripple’s XRP Coin Platform xRapid to Integrate New MIT and Mastercard-backed Payment Portal

As per a news story released by a respected American media outlet, Ripple is all set to integrate a new ‘consumer payments platform’, that has been developed by MIT Media Lab in conjunction with Mastercard, to its native xRapid ecosystem.

For those unaware of what xRapid is, it essentially is an XRP powered cross-border payment system that is able to facilitate monetary transfers internationally within a matter of minutes.

What is the new offering called?

The new project is called SendFriend and it is all set to be released for public use later this year. For starters, the dev team behind this project is looking to target the Philippines so as to allow people living there to send/receive money from anywhere across the globe.

It is also worth mentioning that SendFriend was the winner of the MIT Media Lab Translational Innovation Alliance Award. The project was developed at MIT by David Lighton, who is also the CEO and founder of the firm.

In regards to how this partnership will make a real difference within today’s payment sector, Lighton had the following words:

“That allows us on the back end to be more efficient with our capital. These are real-time settlements so we don’t have to do pre-funding, we don’t have to park money in the receiving corridor and then manage the foreign exchange risk. We can just do it one by one as the transactions go through.”

Final Take

In its core essence, Ripple’s latest partnership will allow a whole host of migrant workers living abroad to send money to their families in a streamlined, hassle-free manner. While the project has yet to be deployed within a live setting, it is being estimated that the initial testing phase will commence fairly soon.

Lastly, another point worth mentioning is that some of SendFriends’ current financial backers include big name players such as Barclays, Techstars, Mahindra Finance and the MasterCard Foundation.