Fintech company Ripple announced the launch of a new product, “Ripple Liquidity Hub”, for enterprise customers. The new solution is set to launch this year and will allow customers to easily buy, sell and hold crypto assets.
On 9 November, blockchain and crypto company Ripple announced at its Swell event that it was launching a new product called Ripple Liquidity Hub for enterprise customers. Ripple Liquidity Hub is said to enable customers to access crypto assets from a variety of locations, including market makers, exchanges and OTC desks. The product will support turnkey integration and smart order routing to source digital assets at optimised prices and enable customers to easily buy, sell and hold crypto assets, Ripple said in its press release. The new solution for enterprise customers is expected to launch in 2023.
Focus on simple and efficient liquidity management
Ripple states it has been using Liquidity Hub for internal liquidity management as part of its on-demand liquidity product for almost two years. Millions of transactions worth billions of dollars would be driven by it. Now, Ripple’s product is also designed to help its clients around the world, as well as financial institutions, banks, fintechs or businesses that need help preparing for a world shifting towards crypto.
“We understand first-hand the need for simple and efficient liquidity management – and as such, we have received feedback from our clients who need solutions that can be a one-stop-shop for buying and selling and holding digital assets. The combination of Ripple’s crypto DNA and longstanding relationship with financial institutions makes us uniquely positioned to address this problem for our clients as they prepare for a tokenised future,” the company quotes RippleNet GM Asheesh Birla as saying in its press release.
Benefits for enterprise customers
Unlike previously existing solutions, Liquidity Hub is tailored to enterprise customers and their unique requirements, it said. The product, according to Ripple, offers easy onboarding, through “a streamlined API for accessing digital assets from a variety of liquidity pools, allowing companies to easily integrate with Liquidity Hub and begin offering trading services to customers that enable new revenue streams,” the company explains. In addition, Liquidity Hub offers “optimised, aggregated pricing across a variety of digital assets, allowing firms to offer clients the best price from a multitude of liquidity venues”. Another advantage is that companies “don’t have to pre-fund accounts for Liquidity Hub”, but “can access working capital through Ripple to fund their business operations”.
Basic service and wallet for every customer
Initially, Liquidity Hub will support Bitcoin, Ether, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and, of course, XRP, depending on the region, according to Ripple. In the future, however, the fintech company wants to expand its offering to more tokenised assets. Ripple also plans to add additional features in the future, such as support for staking and revenue generation functions. The main functionality of Liquidity Hub is provided through the XRPL, utilising the fast, cheap and clean digital asset XRP.
As Ripple writes in its press release, in the future, “every customer will join RippleNet with the same basic service and digital wallet that supports both crypto and fiat”. Through this technology, customers would be able to use the latest solutions and thus stay up to date. He said the platform is designed to update seamlessly, and new services can be added according to customers’ preferences. “Customers can use their Ripple-enabled wallet to store anything that is tokenised,” the company said.
First official partner: Coinme
Ripple’s first customer to use the alpha version was Coinme, a US-based Bitcoin exchange and ATM operator. Coinme will initially use Liquidity Hub’s underlying technology platform and plans to unlock more features – as they become available – according to Ripple.
“Coinme provides convenient and easy access to exchanging cash (fiat currency) for crypto. Managing this extensive network requires around-the-clock access to liquidity 24/7/365, so we can offer our customers the best prices on a variety of assets. We are pleased to partner with Ripple to provide these benefits to our clients and our business,” reflects Ripple Coinme CEO, Neil Bergquist.
The battle with the SEC
The announcement on Ripple’s Liquidity Hub came while the company is still in a legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). However, Ripple, as well as the individuals Chris Larsen (Chairman and co-founder), and CEO Brad Garlinghouse, is defending itself against a lawsuit, claiming that the digital asset XRP, which Ripple utilises, cannot and should not be considered a security.
While Ripple has faced noticeable headwinds from regulatory uncertainty in the US, according to CNBC, the company is seeing increasing traction in other markets such as Japan and the UK. Recently, blockchain payments network RippleNet completed its best quarter ever, according to the company, announcing more than 25-fold growth in its international flows on its network. “Despite headwinds in the US with the SEC, our traction with customers around the world has not slowed,” CNBC quotes Asheesh Birla as saying.