The largest bank in Egypt, the National Bank of Egypt (NBE), is the latest financial institution to join RippleNet — Ripple’s blockchain payment platform — to enable cross-border payments.
NBE Is Now A Ripple Customer
In an announcement on Tuesday, Ripple revealed that NBE will use the San Francisco-based firm’s blockchain technology to power a remittance corridor with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Specifically, NBE will leverage Ripple’s enterprise blockchain software, RippleNet, to connect with UAE-based global financial services enterprise LuLu International Exchange so as to process the payments of the huge number of Egyptians working overseas.
According to Ripple, Egypt is ranked as the fifth-biggest remittances recipient globally with the country’s overseas expatriate communities sending home over $24 billion last year alone.
The announcement does not clarify whether the firms will use Ripple’s cryptocurrency XRP, which powers a different product — the On Demand Liquidity (ODL) solution. Nonetheless, RippleNet customers have the option of using XRP.
Ripple’s Managing Director of MENA and South Asia, Navin Gupta, stressed the significance of reduced transaction costs and time in international money transfers:
“The ability to send and receive money quickly, reliably and inexpensively today plays a larger role than ever before. Ripple is proud to partner with NBE and LuLu Exchange to bolster the MENA region’s financial infrastructure and provide a frictionless cross-border payment experience for the Egyptian community.”
XRP Prices Are Trending Downward Amid Crypto Market Armageddon
Crypto prices have been on the decline in the past week, with bitcoin erasing over $25,000 of its value to $34,762 at press time. Overall, the world’s oldest crypto and co. have shed approximately $800 billion, with most of the losses happening during the last 24 hours.
BTC’s latest selloff has practically wiped out all the gains that resulted from Tesla’s $1.5 billion purchase. To put this into perspective, when the company made the announcement on February 8, BTC was trading at around $39,000 before skyrocketing to a record high near $65,000 in April.
The current market bloodbath has seen most cryptos recording losses between 13% and 41%. XRP lost 29.56% on the day to hit an intraday low of $0.8753, before bouncing back above $1.
Other major coins, including Ethereum, Binance Coin (BNB), Cardano (ADA), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Tesla chief’s new darling crypto Dogecoin (DOGE) have also posted massive double-digit losses.
