In a press release Tuesday, Ripple revealed details of its business expansion into India opening a new office in the city of Mumbai. Former banking executive Navin Gupta will lead the operations, with multiple decades of experience in global banks including HSBC and Citibank.
In a statement, Gupta said:
“India is the largest recipient of corporate and retail remittances worldwide, totaling close to $71 billion…Ripple’s instant, cost-effective blockchain-powered payments can be a transformative component of India’s economy, helping bring the many who have limited access to payments services into the fold.”
In the press release Ripple noted India’s drive for a cashless economy:
“India is transforming itself into a digital economy and is an innovative leader in payments. Our new office in Mumbai, led by Navin, will allow us to respond to the rapidly-growing demand for frictionless payments by our current customers, Axis Bank and YES Bank, as well as other bank and non-banks across the country,” said CEO Brad Garlinghouse. He added, “Navin brings to the role a wealth of global banking and payments expertise that we are confident will drive demand for Ripple payments solutions into India. We are very excited to welcome him to the team.”
The government of India has previously announced a vision to transform the country into a digitally-empowered society and knowledge economy. Some predict India’s digital economy will reach $1 trillion by 2022, from $270 billion today. A key component of this forward-thinking vision includes the India Stack, an ongoing project to create a unified platform to bring India’s population, banks and payment providers into the digital age.
Ripple further expressed that their payment processor on the blockchain could be a transformative component of India’s overall economy.
“Ripple’s instant, cost-effective blockchain-powered payments can be a transformative component of India’s economy, helping bring the many who have limited access to payment services into the fold. We are committed to building our presence in this market with significant investment, and I look forward to expanding our local team with this vision.”
Ripple also plans to host a conference it calls Swell next month in Toronto going after the SWIFT system that services over 11,000 banks with its distributed ledger platform. Where former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee will speak along with other influential keynote speakers. With Ripple recently releasing new code that makes it possible to conduct Lightning-style XRP transactions on Ripple’s network and India now accepting its platform it seems like Ripple is poised explode in value in the near future.
At the time of this report Ripple (XRP) is trading at $0.226876 (BTC: 0.00004858) [FIAT: $0.23 cents USD] according to Coin Market Cap.
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