Ripple (XRP) has partnered with three exchanges to continue improving its cross-border payments. In this latest partnership, Ripple has come together with Mexican exchange Bitso, Bittrex from the United States, and Coin.Ph from the Philippines. These new partnerships are mainly made to enable Ripple’s xRapid payments to move between XRP and Mexican Pesos, US Dollars, and Filipino Pesos.

According to Ripple, “A financial institution (FI) that has an account with Bittrex would initiate a payment in U.S. dollars via xRapid, which instantly converts into XRP on Bittrex. The payment amount in XRP is settled over the XRP Ledger, then Bitso, through its Mexican peso liquidity pool, instantly converts the XRP into fiat, which is then settled into the destination bank account.”

Launching as a liquidity solution for Ripple’s real-time settlement system, xRapid aims at settling  international money transfers between companies and financial institutions. Cary Johnson, Ripple’s Chief Strategist noted that, “We’ve seen several successful xRapid pilots already, and as we move the product from beta to production later this year, these exchange partners will allow us to provide financial institutions with the comfort and assurance that their payments will move seamlessly between different currencies.”

The first institutions in Mexico and the US that joined the xRapid platform in May said it was excellent. The institutions said that the platform was able to record savings of up to 70%. More to that, they also noted that transaction speeds increased from 3 days to two minutes. Despite the solid performance, David Schwartz of Ripple noted that banks were likely to take time before full adoption. He noted that there could be low scalability and problems related to privacy.

Ripple Exploring The International Market

Ripple became famous last year after its market cap overtaking of Ethereum for second place. Even though the digital currency is now the third most famous, its continuing to explore the payments sector. Ripple’s CEO said that they want to make international payments fast, secure, and reliable.

Ripple is working to ensure that it controls the international money transfer market. Its expected that conflict of interest is likely to keep some banks away. Financial institutions have been is a fight with digital currencies since their aim is to eliminate third parties like banks.

The digital currency wants to speed up international transfers in all countries. Breaking into the Chinese market would be great considering the fact that China has already banned digital currencies. The country banned Bitcoin trading in 2017 citing high volatility and illegal use. China has however continued to explore blockchain technology. Companies like Samsung are already using the technology to control their supply chain departments.