While XRP isn’t among the flashiest market performers at the moment, there are certainly things happening behind the curtains for the project. Ripple’s official Twitter account recently shared the insights of Nicholas Palacios, the CEO of Cuallix, who explained his company’s experiences with Ripple’s xRapid technology.
Cuallix is a quarter of a century-old financial institution operating in Mexico, United States, and Hong Kong. It provides credit and payment processing solutions and online financial services to individuals and companies, with products based on specific customer needs and digital content.
“Given that it’s faster and more efficient and more transparent, that can help us give that to our final client,” explained Mr. Palacios. “In Mexico I believe we are the only ones using it. And Mexico has a need [for] the whole population to have good financing products, the best financing products, and this can be the right way to do it,” he concludes. Palacios previously had kind words for xRapid back in January of 2018, when Cuallix confirmed they conducted successful tests of the technology:
“We ran the costs on our end and see that this is 1000 percent more efficient than what we’re doing now. The xRapid pilots all went perfectly,” he explained back then. Cuallix was one of the first 4 customers to get on board the testing of xRapid technology, finding itself in the company of such financial institutions like MoneyGram, IDT Corp and Mercury FX.
XRapid is a liquidity solution for banks that uses Ripple’s XRP as a bridge currency and is being developed by the company Ripple. According to Ripple, xRapid eliminates delays in global payments while also dramatically lowering their cost, thus making cross-border payments instant and inexpensive. The technology was recently praised by Euro Exim Bank, one of the newest Ripple partners, who promised to implement xRapid for cross-border payments in over 80 countries by Q1 of 2019:
“We’re interested in moving forward and creating a platform for payments for our clients who are in over 80 countries at the moment, making sure they have a smooth, frictionless way of paying local people,” communicated the institution.
Caullix is one of 8 companies currently using xRapid and XRP tokens to transfer value within their services. The other institutions, startups and banks that use it are:
ZipRemit is “Using #xrp from @Ripple is revolutionizing the way our entire business operates. For years our team parked huge amounts of capital globally to deliver the services our clients expected. Now we can move money like information, that’s game changing”. The company is registered way back, in 2015, a real financial behemoth. This a minuscule startup, with almost no search popularity before deciding to use XRP. This was probably a publicity stunt by the company, which is a good marketing move.
SBI is the biggest xRapid and XRP user and has tight connections to the overall Ripple project as one of the bigger investors in the Ripple company. This company is the only xRapid customer worth mentioning that would not cause a snickering and scorn among serious financial players.
JNFX is not a bank, it is a foreign currency broker, “specialists in non-speculative trading”. So, a forex broker, that is “huge”.
SendFriend is essentially an app for Philipino expats to send money back home. So, again, not a bank but a small startup.
Similar to SendFriend, the third customer of xRapid is another startup called TranspayGo with “massive” 7800 transactions per month.
FCTS is a scandinavian startup, a e-money and prepaid issuer based in Stockholm. So, another not a bank.
And finally a bank – Euro Exim Bank, a 7 years old bank headquartered and licensed in St Lucia and with a representative office in London that specializes in providing financial services to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), regardless of where in the world they are located.
