Financial inclusion for people with low earnings is one of the biggest challenges in the finance industry in this twentieth century. Poor and the illiterate struggle to get served and in most cases, they are excluded from enjoying services from various financial institutions. The cost of building banks in rural areas can be enormous and unreasonable citing security risks.

Even if they can be accessed, necessary documents are another major bottleneck that prevents people from enjoying banking services. For some countries where economics are uncertain and currencies are volatile, banks set a minimum amount for people who will get served. Ripple is bringing a definite end to these problems not by seeking to replace the traditional systems but enhancing them by being the bridge that seamlessly connects fiats. 

In a recent episode of Block Stars, David Schwartz, Ripple CTO, chatted with Daniel Vogel, Co-founder of a Mexican exchange, Bitso. Daniel stated that Mexican financial institutions intuitively sets an income minimum for those who will be eligible for their service, those with income below the threshold are “not interesting”. He affirmed that cryptocurrency has come to solve the challenge:

“[In Mexico] if you don’t earn over a certain amount of money, you’re just not interesting to [traditional] financial institutions. Crypto solves that problem.”

Because of the economic situation of the country, many Mexican seek to store their funds in USD to escape volatility. There is a need for a seamless solution that ensures people get funds in and out without incurring too many fees. Bitso according to Daniel utilizes Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) to serve as a bridge to connect both USD and Mexican Pesos:

“We want to make sure that people can go in and out of crypto…seamlessly using our rails… On-Demand Liquidity is a service that allows fiat currency conversion using crypto technology. In our case, we’re assisting in the conversion of US Dollars to Mexico Pesos where the digital asset XRP is a bridge currency. We’re processing close to 10% of the remittances from the US to Mexico through ODL.”

Ripple’s ODL is gathering visibility and gaining adoptions in more countries of the world. Regulations may be very slow in recognizing the cutting edge tech but it is sure that in no time, financial technologies will be able to fully use it to complete remittances. 

These solutions with a whole lot of other applications are what set Ripple’s XRP apart and above many other crypto assets today. We at The Currency Analytics believe these features, applications, and programs are more than enough for PayPal to consider adding XRP on its platform come Q1, 2021.