Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange and remittance network created by Ripple Labs Inc., a US-based technology company. Ripple is built upon a distributed open source internet protocol, and supports tokens representing fiat currency, cryptocurrency, commodities, or other units of value such as frequent flier miles or mobile minutes. [3] [4] Released in 2012, Ripple purports to enable "secure, instantly and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks."
Ripple is based around a shared public ledger, [5] the XRP Ledger, [6] which uses a consensus process that allows for payments, exports and remittance in a distributed process. The network can operate without the Ripple company; [7] among its validators are companies, internet service providers, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [8] [9] The ledger employs the decentralized native cryptocurrency known as XRP, which as of September 2018 was the third largest coin by market capitalization. [10] [11]
Used by companies such as UniCredit, UBSand Santander, Ripple has been increasingly adopted by banks and payment networks as settlement infrastructure technology, [12] with American Banker explaining that "from banks' perspective, distributed ledgers like the Ripple system have a number of advantages over cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. "[13]