Ripple's focus on Digital Asset Infrastructure for FIs

Cassie Craddock is Managing Director for UK and Europe at Ripple, the leading provider of digital asset infrastructure for financial institutions.

Here, she explores Ripple’s expanding suite of products for financial institutions seeking to build digital asset infrastructure and capabilities, as well as the fintech’s growing footprint in the European market – which she oversees via the fintech’s continental hubs in London, Geneva, Iceland and Ireland. 

“We're providing a suite of products and services, including a payments product focused on delivering cross-border payments for financial institutions,” she says. 

“Financial institutions want to work with us because they want to give their customers certainty that those payments are going to be delivered instantly and cost-effectively around the globe.”

Exploring Ripple Custody

One of Ripple's key offerings is its custody solution, which was bolstered by the US$250m acquisition of Metaco in May last year. This solution allows financial institutions to securely hold and manage digital assets on behalf of their clients. 

Today, some of the world’s largest financial institutions including BBVA are already leveraging Ripple's technology.

Ripple builds its solutions on the XRP Ledger, a decentralised blockchain chosen for its native capabilities. 

“We think this is the best blockchain for us to build our solutions on,” Cassie notes.

Indeed, Ripple's move into the custody space comes at a time when tokenisation of real-world assets is gaining traction in the traditional banking industry. Cassie anticipates the tokenisation market reaching US$2.8tn by the end of this decade. 

This is fuelled by a trend of banks developing their own stablecoins and tokenising various asset classes, including bonds, securities and debt.

BBVA, a long-time client of Ripple, is using the company's custody solution to provide retail and institutional clients access to buy, sell and hold digital assets. 

Cassie explains the appeal of Ripple's solution: “Firstly, it's highly scalable. Secondly, it recognises the most secure technology platform from a custody perspective and is also validated by other large financial institutions such as HSBC, which are leveraging our custody solution.”

Barriers to blockchain adoption

Despite the growing adoption of blockchain technology and digital assets, Cassie acknowledges that barriers remain. 

“If I think about what the obvious barriers to digital asset adoption and blockchain technology adoption are, of course, it's regulation,” she says. “A lack of regulatory clarity and certainty in markets hinders growth and innovation.”

She also points to the challenges posed by legacy banking systems: “The banking system is generally built on legacy and archaic rails. 

“These financial institutions are challenging to work with and to adopt new technologies. Banks want to, but being built on legacy makes it more challenging.”

As Ripple continues to expand its reach in the digital asset infrastructure space, Cassie emphasises the company's commitment to compliance and innovation. 

She concludes: “We've built a business focused on being compliant first, and our banking and large financial institution customers really trust and appreciate that kind of compliance-first mindset.”

To read the full BBVA's Digital Report, click HERE.

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