According to a press writing on Ripple Insights – The National Bank of Abu Dhabi [NBAD] is the first bank to use the solution of that Ripple delivers for real-time cross border payments.
Immediate international remittances and payments between regional markets have been secured and are supported on reliable channels for the costumers using Ripple.
Ramana Kumar, Managing Director & Head of GTB Business and Product Management, said: “At NBAD we strive to ensure our offerings are efficient and transparent. Blockchain technology transforms and paves a new way in achieving our goals and better serve our customers, adding value through accessibility and transparency. As an initial adopter and first bank to go live on Ripple, NBAD offers innovative solutions to our clients payments needs.”
The UAE is ranked as the fourth top remittance sending country in a global scale, counting above $19 bil – based on the World Bank Migration Remittances Factbook [2016]. From that it is easy to conclude that the could-be-gained benefit for NBAD’s costumers is clear as partnering up with Ripple in the case delivers to the users more cost-effective cross border payments options.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse added, “Banks and their customers have been hearing about the promise of blockchain technology to enable real-time cross-border payments. Now, some of the most innovative and successful banks like NBAD are making this a reality by offering Ripple-enabled payments to their entire customer base, and in doing so, paving the way to make 2017 the year we see broad commercialization of blockchain take hold globally.”
One of the main reasons for the banks movement as the first in the region is security being a very noted out real issue when it comes to users information. As the global shift is indeed existent for financial institutions trying to develop different protections for the data, the move that NBAD took could be a marking stone in the regional banks history in the protection of customer information and transactions by eliminating the requirement of using intermediary banks for transfers, and operates in parallel to the SWIFT system.
Being the first in the region, is just an addition to the growing list in which various financial institutions are part of like Santander, Standard Chartered and UniCredit.