Bank of America Discretely Pilots Ripple Service
- A presentation that was led by Ripple upper management clearly shows Bank of America’s involvement.
- While Bank of America’s management were skeptical back in the day, it now seems that they are preparing to enter the DLT industry.
Bank of America ad in New York. Buck Ennis/Crain’s New York Business
The second biggest bank in the United States – Bank of America, has discretely tested Ripple’s distributed ledger technology and we can only speculate what else they are planning for the future.
For the moment, Ripple only identified Bank of America as a “customer” as part of a presentation that was held at a seminar at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
A Ripple spokesperson did not want to comment on the statement above but shared that Ripple and Bank of America did administer a mutual pilot.
The spokesperson did not share any other details (nor did Bank of America) except saying:
“Bank of America has been part of Ripple’s Global Payment Steering Group since 2016 and we did a pilot with them.”
It is a well known fact that Bank of America is part of Ripplenet’s steering group that advises them on rules and standards.
However, the recent news of a mutual pilot shows more than just friendly advice connections.
This would be a serious change in direction for Bank of America as until now, Cathy Bessant – their chief technology officer was skeptical of the technology as a whole.
She noted that the bank’s portfolio of blockchain patents (the largest of all financial institutions) is present only if good use cases do arise.
Another sign that Bank of America is preparing to enter the blockchain sector is the fact that they are job hunting for a product manager who would drive a ‘Ripple project’ team.
We can see that the project is outlined as “a decentralized ledger technology-based solution to cross border payments marketed to GTS clients”. For those who are not aware – Global Transaction Services (GTS) is Bank of America’s division that is employed with financial institutions and other large companies’ treasury departments.
About the presentation
The presentation we are talking about was led by Ripple’s head of government and regulatory affairs for the Asia-Pacific region – Saga Sarbhai, as part of a seminar for fintech and financial inclusion in the Pacific Islands.
The exact slide targets Ripple’s xCurrent service and is called “A Snapshot of Our Customers” and we clearly see Bank of America’s logo at the top. Below it we can see 15 other financial institutions’ logos which are not arranged in alphabetical order, if you get what we mean.
The presentation was posted on IMF.org later on and even circulated around Twitter. It seems that Bank of America have tested the xCurrent service that powers an independent xRapid product and is also sold occasionally to fund operations.
xCurrent customers include Santander, American Express and PNC and do not involve XRP.
It is actually Santander that shared that xCurrent will premier online international transfers to the United States for some of their customers from Latin America.
- A federal judge ruled that the sale of XRP through exchanges and algorithms did not qualify as selling securities, which could have a major impact on several SEC lawsuits.
- The institutional sale of the token, however, did violate federal securities laws, and the lawsuit between the SEC and Ripple will have to go to trial.
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- These documents are seen as central in Ripple’s battle against the SEC, which in 2020 accused the company of selling its XRP token without registering it as a security.
- The documents in question are internal emails, text messages, and expert reports that followed Hinman’s 2018 speech, in which he said ETH and BTC were not securities.
- The exchange argues that the SEC failed to provide a “fair notice” that selling XRP was illegal, and that it previously made public statements that those transactions were lawful.
- Coinbase also pointed out that the SEC is yet to provide clear guidance to crypto businesses, and that it keeps being inconsistent about its enforcement approach.