On Friday, December 15, Japanese and South Korean banks will begin testing Ripple's blockchain technology for cross-border payments within one day, with a fee reduction by 30%. This was reported by the Nikkei Asian Review. The Japanese side in the experiment is represented by SBI Ripple Asia, a division of SBI Holdings. The Korean side is the blockchain company DAYLI Intelligence and two largest banks of the country.
Ripple technology allows banks to abandon centralized clearing operations and conduct operations in real time with significantly lower fees.
In case of successful test results, the first real cross-border payments between Japan and South Korea will be implemented in the spring of 2018. Using Ripple’s XRP token, banks intend to reduce commissions up to 60% in comparison with traditional tools.
Initially, the upcoming pilot project of interbank payments based on Ripple technology was first announced in September.
Also in late November, there was announced a Ripple-based cross-border payments system to be launched by Standard Chartered, Indian Axis Bank and RAKBANK from the UAE.
The news supported the price of XRP token, which rose 100% in a few days, from $0.25 on December 11, to around 50 cents on December 13.
The price of Ripple may go even higher, especially if the rumors that the token gets listed on Coinbase become true. The Coinbase team added a Ripple expert in its next round of expansion, and some people say that this might lead to the listing on the largest crypto exchange in the US.
Ripple maintains its position on the 4th place among the largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, with over $18 billion in total.
As for Bitcoin, it goes in a sideways trend fluctuating around $17,000. Investors assess the news about the debut on the CBOE futures exchange and are looking for the launch on the CME exchange on December 18.