Can Ripple disrupt the global payments market?

Abstract

The goal of my essay was to explore blockchain or distributed ledger technologies like Ripple and to inquire into how such systems can potentially disrupt industries such as global payments. Ripple’s distributed ledgers eliminate the need for back-office databases to be kept to complete cross-border payments, which saves significant money and time. Its digital asset XRP can handle the same throughput as VISA with its distributed ledger and offers a distributed technology where banks and financial institutions can send money on a distributed network between each other instead of the current centralised system which requires extensive use of intermediaries. The average cost for remittance payments is 7.1 per cent, and World Bank plans to lower it to 3 per cent by the year 2030. If Ripple is successful, it plans to lower remittance payments costs to 0.3 per cent.