Ripple might breakthrough the Chinese market by the end of this year as the creators are very confident this time to have built a blockchain programme which will have some traction in every transaction. This news has been reported vigorously.
Currently, Ripple is only in informal talks with the payment providers, banks, and regulators with an initiative to launch their Xcurrent software in China. This system facilitates banks to settle down their cross-border transactions with a traction record of each of their transactions but not which with the cryptocurrency. Sagar Sarbhai, the Ripple’s head of government for regulatory relations with Asia the Pacific said,
“This year you will see more announcements coming in on China, in terms of educating and differentiating us from some of the other cryptocurrencies that are out there. As we speak, our team is strategising about entering the market, but it’s still very early days.”
Sagar Sarbhai has also agreed to the fact that there was a lack of regulatory clarity of cryptocurrency which has been the main cause for the delay of the market entry of cryptocurrencies in China. But he has high hopes for the company as they are progressing at a rapid pace. CEO of Ripple last year, Brad Garlinghouse also said the crypto event in China is about to happen soon.
Mr. Sarbhai also added in his statement that they’re trying to bring regulatory clarity in their currency and also been engaging informally with payment providers, banks, regulators informally and trying to explain them about Ripple and providing a clear view about their vision and dream.
“In Asia Pacific, we already have live clients in Japan, India, Thailand… We’re in active discussions with almost all the countries in the Asia Pacific and are finding one bank almost every week.”, said Mr. Sarbhai.
Ripple recently partnered with a HongKong based money transfer company named, LianLian. The Hongkong based company can have this feature of looking through real-time invoice and e-commerce payments on behalf of the system using RippleNet which is their Ripple’s own payment Network System. This grants access to inbound payments across China but its still not present in the mainland China.
Mr. Sarbhai says that he’s extremely hopeful from China since it forms an important of Asia which is necessary for their vision of Asia Pacific. During the recent years, they have reduced the number of capital institutions that can handle and implement cross-border payments as well as the potential trade way between China and US.
GTR recently reported that US fintech companies could be extremely responsive to the trade actions between world’s two largest economies as evidenced just like in January the US government blocked 1.2B $ sale of MoneyGram to Alibaba’s Ant Financial Platform. In our discussions with China’s regulatory bodies so far, this is something that hasn’t come up. We’re essentially a software company, licensing software to banks and enterprises who want to move money cross-border.
If a Chinese bank wants to use our solution and the regulator sees no risk with the solution, I don’t see why the government, even in a so-called hostile environment, would have any issue with that. But this is early days in what you call the trade war and hostile environment.” said Mr. Sarbhai in his recent interview. However, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are extremely sensitive to the market so it is not recommended to the general public to invest in it.
