XRP is a “Big Game Changer,” says Ripple SVP Asheesh Birla Regarding RippleNet Payments Business

Asheesh Birla, the SVP of Product at Ripple while speaking with Ginger Baker, the senior director of product at Ripple recently talked about RippleNet, XRP among other things.

Starting with what exactly Ripple is trying to solve, he explains how the initial idea was to move money like information. But today still sending money is a painful experience as he says the “crazy thing” is sending money today is similar to 1960s.

The financial world hasn’t still caught up with the rest of the world and Ripple is facilitating the modern way of sending money. But not by destroying the good things like regulations or financial institutions.

The plan is to work constructively with banks along with central banks that are basically working for making it better.

RippleNet & Destination Targets

Explaining RippleNet, he says it is a combination of different financial institutions and banks around the world that are working together to move the money system.

Today, he says,

“over 200 customers and 40 different pairs are offered on Ripple.”

As for the special focus on Mexico and the Philippines, Birla says they both are more than $30 billion markets each for remittances which present a huge

“market opportunity.”

For providing on-demand liquidity, they leverage XRP to send money cross border eliminating the need for pre-funding and different factors like regulations. This way it provides “best of both the world,” on-demand liquidity with no pre-funding.

He further shared that their team is hard at work to make it easier for companies to integrate with Ripple’s API which usually takes 6 to 8 months but Ripple will make it just in weeks.

“We are working on making it easier to integrate into RippleNet, customers go live within weeks.”

Southeast Asia is the current target of Ripple and the positive response from Mexico and the Philippines over on-demand liquidity so far has been “overwhelming”. Ripple would also be soon moving to other regions about which Birla said,

“Next set of destinations will be announcing in short order here.”

The Power Of XRP

But why XRP exactly? In answer to this audience’s question, Birla says the digital asset is built “specifically for payments” and settles payments in a matter of seconds or minutes. Moreover, it costs only a fraction of pennies and is scalable, allowing one to do thousands of transactions.

However, digital assets are prone to fluctuations and the currency volatility can affect RippleNet. Birla says the good thing is the product is exposed to the digital asset XRP for only a couple of seconds. Moreover, it changes US Dollar to Mexican peso exchange rate so there is no need to look under the hood.

Whether it is a big amount of money that involves trillions of dollars to be tied up in banks or the cost issue with small amounts, XRP solves these problems.

The fact that you can move money on demand with XRP, is a “big game changer,” said Birla.