The biggest financial messaging service for the world's biggest banks, announced their plans to launch a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) of a gateway known as "GPI" that will link to the enterprise blockchain software firm R3's Corda network.



According to Swift CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt,  the company would integrate R3's platform with its new payments standards framework GPI, or Global Payments Innovation. Swift is partnering with blockchain start-up R3.

Gottfried Leibbrandt said during the panel session at the Paris Fintech Forum on Wednesday, "We are announcing later today a proof-of-concept with the R3 blockchain on trade where you can initiate a payment on the trade platform and then it goes into GPI."

"Our new GPI platform is extremely interoperable and open, and we’ve always had links to other networks [...] we are announcing later today a Proof-of-Concept with R3 blockchain on trade, where you can initiate a payment on the trade platform, and then it goes into GPI. So we’re exploring interconnectivity with a lot of things", Leibbrandt told the panel.

According to CNBC reports, "Swift is the irrefutable leader in cross-border payments, with more than 11,000 institutions using its platform. It moves an estimated $200 billion around the world every day."

On the Paris Fintech Forum, Leibbrandt was speaking beside Brad Garlinghouse, the chief executive of Ripple Labs Inc., a strong competitor to R3. The American technology company based in San Francisco, California has made no secret of its bid to steal business from the almost five-decades-old payments processing giant.

Garlinghouse told at the panel discussion that Ripple was open to "ways we could work with Swift," but neither company hinted at a partnership between the two in the near-term.

"Decentralized systems I think over time are likely to win," Garlinghouse said. "I think that today that is not what Swift is," he added.

Swift has been much more undecided to accept blockchain technology. The institution rolled out GPI in 2017 to speed up payment-processing times, increase transparency and lower costs, but it turns out to relied on their existing infrastructure and cloud technology.

Because Leibbrandt admitted that he has lack of enthusiasm about blockchain and he concerns over the volatile swings seen in cryptocurrencies. One of the example is the Bitcoin, the world's best known cryptocurrency that climbed to a record high price of $20,000 towards the end of 2017, but has since plummeted to around $3,400.

But Leibbrandt said, "I think that the big part of Ripple's value proposition is the cryptocurrency XRP."

"There we do find the banks are hesitant to convert things into a cryptocurrency right now because of the volatility in the currencies."

Ripple possess the 60% percent of XRP and sells the asset to fund its business. Garlinghouse said that worries over volatility in cryptocurrencies were unfounded.

He said, "I hear people talk about volatility and I feel like they're propagating this misinformation.  Mathematically, there's less volatility risk in an XRP transaction than there is in a fiat transaction."


News Sources: cnbc.com
Image Edited by goodfilipino.com

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