Investors still want a piece of the blockchain.
Ripple, the enterprise blockchain startup, today announced that it raised $55 million in Series B funding to accelerate customer adoption of its technology.
That brings Ripple’s total funding to $93.6 million since its launch in 2012, according to Crunchbase.
“I think there’s a lot of hype in the blockchain space,” Ripple President and COO Brad Garlinghouse told Bank Innovation. “Ripple is unique because it has distinguished itself in a leadership role by applying [blockchain technology] in real use cases, not in innovation labs.”
These use cases include money sent through Ripple’s distributed financial technology for Banco Santander, the Spanish bank, and the enterprise-blockchain startup has also recently partnered with Shanghai Huarui Bank, a new private bank in China. The Chinese bank will use Ripple’s technology to improve the speed and ease of international payments—such as when Chinese parents send money to their children studying abroad, a process which is quite difficult for the Chinese currently, according to Garlinghouse.
Aside from its new funds, Ripple has also added seven bank clients, including Shanghai Huarui Bank, to its client list: Standard Chartered Bank, Westpac, National Australia Bank (NAB), Mizuko Financial Group (MHFG), BMO Financial Group, and Siam Commercial Bank in Thailand.
With these banks, Ripple’s global network now includes a notable portion of the top 50 global banks: 15 of them, to be precise. A good number of these banks also acted as investors in Ripple’s $55 million funding round: Standard Chartered and the venture arm of Siam Commercial participated in the round alongside Santander Innoventures, the investment arm of Santander, which is already a Ripple client.
“It’s great to see our customers believe in us enough to invest,” says Garlinghouse, adding that this is in part attributable to the speed and transparency of Ripple’s solutions.
“Ripple is providing new base rails for cross-border settlement and messaging,” he said. “Square or Apple Pay are really just new ways to swipe a credit card, but the payment rails are the same; nothing actually changed there. [Clients] are taking advantage of Ripple’s changes to that base; more speed, more transparency.”
To learn more about blockchain, join us at Bank Innovation Israel this November 1-3 in Tel Aviv. Learn more and register here.