Germany's Fidor Bank is to become the first the bank in the world to utilise the Ripple protocol for sending real-time money transfers.
San Francisco-based Ripple offers a decentralised order book relying on open-source peer-to-peer payment protocols to speed the transfer of financial information.
Fidor plans to use the Ripple network to provide customers with faster and more affordable money transfer services while deploying the protocol's real-time settlement functionality to streamline inter-bank payments between branches and with other financial institutions as they come online.
"Ripple enables us to securely and instantly send money anywhere in the world at no additional cost and through the same customer facing products and relationships we offer today," says Matthias Kröner, CEO of Fidor Bank. "With Ripple, we can deliver a superior banking experience at a fraction of the time and cost traditionally expected of a financial institution."
He says the company will officially launch Ripple integration later this year.
Speaking at the Finextra Future Money conference last week, Fidor investor Udayan Goyal of Anthemis Group forecast that applications like Ripple pose a credible threat to the long-term future of traditional payment networks such as Swift, by allowing banks to to seamlessly transact with other institutions without the need for correspondent banks, fees, time delays or additional integration work.