US Financial Giant PNC to Use Ripple Technology for International Payments

PNC, which is ranked among the top ten U.S. banks, will use RippleNet to process international payments for its customers, Ripple announced Wednesday, September 19.

As Reuters reports, a particular PNC unit — Treasury Management — will use Ripple’s blockchain solution xCurrent to speed up overseas transactions held by U.S. commercial clients.

Ripple emphasises that xCurrent will allow PNC business clients to receive payments against their invoices instantly, changing their approach to managing both accounts and their working capital.

Senior vice president for product management of Ripple, Asheesh Birla, thinks that using xCurrent in banking is the first step towards adoption of other Ripple products, such as the xRapid solution set to be launched in a few months. "It's a way [for the banks] to get their toe into the water,” Birla told Reuters.

The news come despite the fact some Ripple employees were sceptical about using xCurrent in cross-border payments. As Cointelegraph reported in June, Ripple’s chief cryptographer David Schwartz said banks were unlikely to deploy the technology because of low scalability and privacy problems.

PNC, listed by Bankrate as one of top ten largest U.S. banks with 8 million customers and retail branches in 19 states, joined other global financial institutions which had previously partnered with Ripple.

For instance, in late 2017 American Express announced it was creating a Ripple-powered app for B2B payments between US corporate customers and Santander UK customers. Later in March, a Japanese bank consortium stated it will release an instant domestic payments mobile app “MoneyTap” based on Ripple.

And in April, Cointelegraph wrote that Spanish-based bank Santander launched Ripple-powered blockchain payment network One Pay FX, reportedly becoming the first international bank to do so.