American multinational investment bank and financial services company, Bank of America, has silently tested Ripple’s blockchain to incorporate distributed ledger technology (DLT) in its banking and other financial services.
This might be the boldest step towards blockchain adoption as Bank of America is one of the largest and most distinguished banks in the United States. It seems that Bank of America wouldn’t stop here and go a bit further with blockchain deployment in their real-world banking services; however, the bank did not confirm the decision to fully implement Ripple’s technology at this stage.
Ripple, being one of the most popular blockchain partners among the largest banks across the world, is one of the only companies which develop and deploy blockchain technology that banking and finance institutes are adopting and getting the best out of it in terms of secure, transparent and real-time cross border transactions. Several banks across the world use Ripple’s distributed ledger technology and products like xRapid and xCurrent to conduct international transactions.
Bank of America has been silently working with Ripple’s blockchain technology for a long while; it is not something that happened in just a matter of a few weeks or months. Bank of America’s collaboration with Ripple might just upset other banks too as the banking giant has always been blockchain-shy even after filing multiple blockchain patents.
According to Coinspeaker, rumors were circulating of a mutual agreement between Ripple and Bank of America. However, the latest announcement from the Bank of America confirmed that it might become the next banking giant to adopt Ripple’s blockchain network and employ it for real-world applications. It is important to note that currently Bank of America doesn’t hold plans to use the Ripple (XRP)trade cryptocurrency.
Blockchain Partnership with Over 200 Financial Institutes
So far, Ripple has introduced xRapid, a product specifically created for banking firms and financial institutes to ease the process of cross-border transactions settlement and manage their liquidity. Ripple boasts more than 200 financial institutions as clients with Euro Exim Bank and the TAS group being the first banks publicly adopt Ripple’s payment system in 2013.
Last year, at a seminar held by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ripple gave a presentation where it identified Bank of America as a client. When asked, Ripple’s spokeswoman neither confirmed nor denied that Bank of America is the latest customer using Ripple’s financial product. Instead, the crypto company had this to say: “Bank of America has been part of Ripple’s Global Payment Steering Group since 2016, and we did a pilot with them.”
The spokesperson declined to provide further information regarding the mutual agreement between Ripple and Bank of America. Bank of America declined to comment as well.
