Today’s society wants ‘Instant Gratification’. We only need to pick up our smartphones and within moments, an Uber or tonight’s Japanese feast is on our front doorstep.
Technology is rapidly keeping stride with our fast-paced lifestyles and demands. When you think of it, what can’t we get instant gratification for?
You want a movie? You Netflix. You want a getaway? You Airbnb. You want Tacos? You Uber Eats. You want help setting up that new media system you just bought? You Airtasker.
So why on earth can’t we get instant payment settlement?
A world of real-time possibles lie in the palm of our hands, but when it comes to settling payment, businesses and individuals have been restrained by the reins of a 1970’s technology, a.k.a. SWIFT.
You might be thinking ‘But I pay for things everyday using my credit card and that’s instant?’ Right?
Well, It's not always the case. Today, the settlement of a payment is nowhere near instant if foreign currencies are exchanged. Paying from your wallet to settling that payment in a overseas bank account is still a 3-5 day process - and there’s nothing instant about that.
There's light at the end of this tunnel though. For example, for large US global organizations like Uber or Airbnb, holding and utilizing the digital asset XRP eliminates the current dilemma - seeing instant gratification for the sender and the receiver of a payment.
Here’s a hypothetical example:
Airbnb to Joe
Meet Joe, an Airbnb host in Mexico. His beach-side condo in Puerto Vallarta has recently been booked for the summer vacation. Great! But how long will it realistically take for that payment to land in Joe's wallet? Three, four, five days?
With XRP, it’s just a few minutes.
If Airbnb US HQ were to hold XRP instead of dormant Fiat, they could directly send XRP to a partner exchange in Mexico, in order to pay our friend Joe in real-time.
How? XRP is sold for Mexican Pesos (MXN) on Bitso and then sent to Joe’s BBVA bank account, all in a matter of a few minutes. Payday is the real payday for our Airbnb host, as he can pay himself a wage and ensure the constant upkeep of his luxury condo.
A knock-on effect for Airbnb HQ to hold XRP is they no longer need a spread of Fiat currencies to pay their hosts globally; equally there’s tremendous cost savings and the removal of liquidity management. What’s more, they can wave goodbye to old ways of periodic batch payments (SWIFT).
In future, Airbnb HQ could also become an integral part of RippleNet (xRapid liquidity) by utilizing their initial XRP holdings on the Bitso exchange.
How? Airbnb HQ would later sell XRP for USD (or any other Fiat currency) as part of another xRapid payment process on that exchange, and the money just keeps flowing...
It’s frictionless cross-border payments, closing the loop on settlement. Instant gratification.
From content to back pocket
Coil has recently revolutionized the content space as we know it. Content consumers and providers of the likes of Twitch, YouTube and Wikipedia are already seeing the real-time benefits of Web Monetization through streamed micropayments.
Instant gratification not only comes in the form of pay-per-view content, but it’s in the settlement of payment to the content providers themselves that is truly groundbreaking.
Currently, a content viewer will stream XRP payments to a coil-enabled site, like a YouTube channel. The genius here is that the content provider can now settle that payment in real-time; something that currently can’t be done with Fiat or other digital assets.
Global remittance
Global remittance has played an integral part of Ripple’s surge in progress. A prime example is the recently built remittance bridge between Japan’s SBI Remit and Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank.
Leveraging RippleNet, real-time payments from 45,000+ Thai workers living in Japan can now be sent to their loved ones back home in Thailand. This is all made possible by utilizing RippleNet’s ‘pathfinding’ and instant settlement capabilities; allowing a worker to deposit money in a SBI Remit ATM and within moments, that money will be available to withdraw from a Siam ATM, all with reduced processing costs and fees.
MoneyTap - Domestic settlement
Powered by RippleNet, MoneyTap is a smartphone application developed for a consortium of Japanese banks which will soon see customers sending and settling domestic payments in real-time.
Apart from instant settlement, any costs associated with existing banking and ATM fees will remain in the customer’s pocket - just another avenue in which Ripple are supporting the settlement process.
We want it now. We can get it.
¹“We want to create a payment network like SWIFT. But one where the settlement, the actual movement of money, the actual plumbing underneath the surface, would be a decentralized, open network… The endgame is just money moving invisibly, as easily as information.”
-David Schwartz, CTO at Ripple.
Instant gratification is the need to experience fulfillment without any delay or wait. We live in a day and age where businesses and technology are not slowing down to meet these requirements; so there’s no reason why money should not only move like information, but also be settled in the same fashion.
Ripple, Coil and the wider ecosystem have armed themselves with the speed, transparency, low fees and liquidity of XRP to combat the tail end of global payment settlement - providing instant gratification for not only financial institutions, but also for individuals like you and me.
When it comes to payments, RippleNet and XRP deliver for a real-time global society that wants everything now.
Sources:
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2018/09/04/ripples-trillion-dollar-man/
https://ripple.com/insights/the-power-of-instant-remittances-ripplenet-in-japan/
Credit:
(Twitter) @XRPTrump - XRP holding explanation.
