On Wednesday (19 September 2018), cross-border payment specialist Ripple announced that it had signed up PNC Bank, a top 10 U.S. bank.
PNC Financial Services Group (“PNC”) is the nineth-largest U.S. bank, according to the latest numbers from S&P Global Market Intelligence, with $380.7 billion in total assets (as of 30 June 2018). It has over eight million customers (consumers, small businesses, and large corporations) that use its “various deposit, lending, credit card, cash management and investment services,” and retail branches in 19 states. Ripple says that its technology “will have an immediate impact on each of those groups, enabling PNC’s commercial clients to receive payments from overseas banks in real time.”
By using Ripple’s xCurrent product, a commercial client in one of the U.S. states can now receive a payment from a UK customer will be able to receive payments almost instantly, which has a transformative effect on the way “they manage their accounts receivable and allowing them to better manage their working capital.”
PNC has already completed a pilot phase, and plans to immediately start using xCurrent in production.
Asheesh Birla, Ripple’s Senior Vice President of Product, said that Ripple is hoping that once PNC has become comfortable with using xCurrent, it can get PNC to also use Ripple’s liquidity solution, xRapid:
“With PNC, the idea is to get a few corridors lit up with xCurrent … When they're ready to start talking about emerging markets, we'll introduce them to xRapid. We're working to get them started with xCurrent so it's not a completely new feature to move to xRapid.”
PNC now has become the latest financial institution to join RippleNet, Ripple’s fast-growing global network of banks, payment providers, and digital asset exchanges, which has over 100 members, and spans 40 countries and six continents.
Today’s news comes only six days after Ripple announced on its website that National Commercial Bank (NCB) of the Kingdom Saudi Arabia (KSA) had joined RippleNet.
Featured Image Courtesy of Ripple
