Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says the problems with today’s payment apps are not complex. They are not made to converse with each other.
Garlinghouse spoke at the event and compared modern payment networks to the early days of the internet. Garlinghouse once compared today’s payment apps to older, closed networks like AOL, noting that even though PayPal owns Venmo, Venmo and PayPal weren’t able to move funds between each other until recently.
Why sending money overseas is still a pain
Garlinghouse said the biggest friction in the overall payments system occurs when people try to send money internationally. It’s time-consuming, expensive and error-prone, and money can sit in transit for weeks while people track it down. That’s the problem Ripple tried to solve.
What can you actually do? $XRP useful
Garlinghouse was careful to frame the technology in terms that customers actually care about, rather than jargon. Ann $XRP No matter where you are in the world, transactions can be completed in about four seconds, he said. move money using $XRP He said the cost per transaction is just a few pennies, and frame speed and cost are the only two things that matter to the people actually using the technology.
He drew a direct comparison to Bitcoin to make the point. Garlinghouse said a Bitcoin transaction costs nearly $10 and can take up to 10 minutes to clear. Garlinghouse was quick to add that this is not against Bitcoin. According to him, different blockchains are simply built for different jobs, just as different internet protocols serve different purposes.
Sell to banks instead of individuals
Rather than pitching $XRP Ripple has chosen to sell its technology directly to banks and financial institutions around the world. Garlinghouse also mentioned the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple, noting that Ripple’s U.S. operations were largely stagnant for about five years before things finally changed.
A quick explanation of what blockchain actually is
Garlinghouse also explained blockchain itself in plain language. In other words, it is an open ledger with debits and credits that anyone can view and past transactions cannot be changed. For Ripple, using blockchain was never a goal as it is an interesting technology. The idea was to apply it to real-world problems that financial institutions and their customers were already having.
