Technical Director of Ripple’s Stefan Thomas (Stefan Thomas) confirmed the participation of American Express and Western Union in tests xRapid for processing cross-border payments. He told this to the author of the podcast Gregarious Mammal during the June Berlin Tech Open Air; the interview came out on Monday, August 20.
By approximately the fourth minute of the interview with Thomas, discussing the benefits of the products Ripple, said:
“The number of companies that have agreed to use xCurrent and XRapid include American Express and Western Union, so that the site tested big business”.
Thomas also commented on accusations of excessive centralization and the support of traditional financial systems, which often impose more uncompromising members of the crypto community. According to him, such claims do not much care about the startup:
“Ripple has always been primarily the payment company. Blockchain has always been an important part for us, but we never followed any dogma in terms of what we take from it. In every our product there is a bit of the blockchain”.
He continued, stating that current discussions about architecture registry XRP’t concern him. In his opinion, XRP is more Autonomous than bitcoin, as most of the hash of the BTC blockchain is concentrated in four mining pools.
Thomas believes that in most cases the criticism comes from investors that have invested significant funds in BTC or other oldoini and considering XRP as a serious competitor. These people, says Thomas, are guided by the principle “you are our competitors, so we’ll ruin your reputation”.
Recall the first time information on cooperation with Western Union the Ripple appeared in the beginning of this year. When the startup has designed the agreement with American Express is unknown, but the rumors about some jointly implemented by the initiative of the companies began in July, when AmEx began seeking professionals to work with Ripple xCurrent. In addition, at the end of last year, the us payment giant in collaboration with the Spanish Bank Santander has opened a payment corridor based on Ripple for transatlantic transfers.
