Amid FTX contagion fears and the legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Ripple Labs is currently hosting its Swell Global conference in London.
Yesterday’s first day featured CEO Brad Garlinghouse (“BG”), among others, speaking about the massive progress made recently.
Garlinghouse said on stage that he believes the crypto industry will emerge stronger from the current crisis if it continues to focus on transparency and trust. “Ripple is and will continue to be a leader in this regard”, Garlinghouse stated.
In his speech, the CEO highlighted the massive milestones and announcements that the fintech has achieved this week alone. Thus, $30 billion in payments, both fiat and cryptocurrencies, have been processed through RippleNet.
In addition, Ripple has partnered with MFS Africa, which will deploy the XRP-based On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) payment solution. “Our 6th continent!”, BG said.
Furthermore, the company reached the milestone of almost 40 payout markets now being live on ODL, representing 90% of FX markets. Cassie Craddock-Ball, Head of BD at Ripple tweeted:
#ODL is on fire. Today using XRP as a bridge currency, ODL can access nearly 40 payout markets, representing 90% of FX markets. I remember 2 years ago when that stat was just 4 markets.
Ripple solving real customer problems using crypto.
Furthermore, the fintech from San Francisco now counts more than 19 new and updated ODL customers from all over the world. Just this week, the company announced that Supermojo is live and using Liquidity Hub to source ETH.
In particular, the partnership with MFS Africa promises great things for Ripple, as the company can be a door opener for the gigantic African market.
Why This Is A Major Milestone For Ripple
MFS Africa has the largest mobile money presence in Africa, with over 400 million users and more than 800 payment corridors across the continent. The new partnership is designed to streamline real-time mobile payments with ODL for customers in 35 countries.
MFS Africa is also a member of the Pan-African Payment & Settlement System. PAPSS facilitates payments between countries with a unified settlement system and is similar to SWIFT, specifically for Africa.
For the XRP-community, this is an important testament to Ripple’s ability to get things implemented. What is particularly interesting is that PAPSS connects not only banks, but also central banks.
As a result, speculation is rife that XRP-based payment technology could expand to include national wallets, given the proliferation of mobile wallets in the region.
CBDCs in general are a big topic at the Swell Global conference. Among others, James Wallis, head of RippleX, spoke yesterday on “Central Bank Digital Currency Strategy and Best Practices.” In addition, the winners of the “CBDC Innovate Global Hackathon” were announced.
🥁 Meet the 6 winners of the #CBDCInnovate hackathon!
These projects leveraged Ripple’s #CBDC solution to build features for ✔️interoperability, ✔️financial inclusion and ✔️retail apps for up to $150K USD in cash prizes (1/5)
— RippleX (@RippleXDev) November 16, 2022
On today’s second day, Derrick Walton of Bank of America will participate in a panel discussion on the role of commercial banks in the adoption of CBDCs. Jorn Lambert, Chief Digital Officer at Mastercard, spoke already yesterday on the question, “Is Cryptocurrency The Next Internet?”
Strong first day at @Ripple #SwellGlobal in London. Kicked off with an energetic and forward looking conversation with @JornLambert from @Mastercard and ended the day presenting our 5th Annual Blockchain Innovation Awards. Congratulations to the winners! #CryptoMeansBusiness https://t.co/zVIfe0SFBQ
— Brooks Entwistle (@BrooksEntwistle) November 16, 2022
Meanwhile, the XRP price has not shown any strength following the major announcements.