Ben Bernanke And Tim Berners-Lee Headliners At First Ripple Swell Finance

OCT 12, 2017 @ 01:20 PM3,974
Ben Bernanke And Tim Berners-Lee Headliners At First Ripple Swell Finance Conference

Tom Groenfeldt , CONTRIBUTOR
I write about finance and technology.

Dr. Ben Bernanke and Sir Tim Berners-Lee are speaking at an international banking conference in Toronto Oct. 16-18, but it’s not SWIFT’s Sibos, also being held in Toronto. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve and the inventor of the World Wide Web will be appearing at Swell, a new conference sponsored by Ripple, the global payments company that uses blockchain technology.

“Recently our customers requested that Ripple bring together leaders in banking and blockchain who are committed to changing the way the world moves money today,” Asheesh Birla, vice president of product for Ripple, said in announcing the conference. “Swell is attracting a roster of payments experts and industry luminaries to discuss trends, success stories of blockchain implementations and real-world blockchain use cases to meet changing customer demands for global payments.”

McKinsey in its evaluation of payment proposals for the Federal Reserve System’s Faster Payment Task Force, described Ripple as a company that leverages distributed financial technology to enable real-time cross-border payments for financial institutions that join their network. It also “allows for originators to see total cost of payment and real-time tracking for low- and high-value payments,” although McKinsey said the price transparency was dependent on banks’ being willing to share the information.

The report said Ripple is flexible enough to be integrated directly into a financial institution’s payment hub or integrated into a third-party provider’s platforms to which financial institution is already.

Ripple recently announced that it has reached 100 customers across 27 countries on RippleNet, its payments network which it says is the world’s only global blockchain solution for payments. Members include Credit Agricole, SEB and Siam Commercial. Banks on the network can send and receive money in seconds with a clear view of the costs and the exchange rate.

Some user examples Ripple cites on its web page include U.A.E.-based RAKBANK and U.K.-based payment providers IFX, TransferGo, and Currencies Direct which will use RippleNet to send payments into India, the largest beneficiary of retail remittances worldwide at $71 billion annually. Blockchain-powered payments into South America will be available to RippleNet members through dLocal, which specializes in payment acceptance and corporate disbursements in emerging markets. It counts Uber, Godaddy, Payoneer and Tipalti among its global customers.

Ripple said that Credit Agricole plans to improve remittance services from Switzerland — home of the largest group of French expatriates worldwide — to France.

Other speakers at Swell will include Brad Garlinghouse, CEO, Ripple; Amit Sethi, CIO, Axis Bank; Tom Jessop, president, Chain Inc.; Kristen Michaud, managing director for treasury operations at GE Capital; Brian Behlendorf, executive director, Hyperledger; Ed Metzger, head of innovation, Santander and Dr. Arak Sutivong, head of strategy, Siam Commercial Bank.

Twitter @tomgroenfeldt