well, Ripple markets itself as a cross-border payments solution for large financial institutions based on blockchain technology.
At the moment, an international payment may take a few days to make with a very high cost. A headache for banks is high-volume, but low-value, transactions — the kind that Facebook might pay out to app makers, for example. These can often be expensive and unprofitable for the banks because it takes a lot of effort to move the money and the percentage cut won't be as high as for a larger transaction.
Ripple is trying to solve this problem via its technology. The start-up has been conducting trials with a number of financial institutions, including American Express and Santander.