PNC Bank, the 9th largest bank in the United States by assets, has joined Ripple’s enterprise blockchain network RippleNet in what is a noteworthy addition for the San Francisco-based fintech.
With over $380 billion in assets, Pittsburg-based PNC Financial Services Group has become the latest member to join RippleNet, a global payments network of over 100 institutions including banks, payment providers, remittance forwarders and operators among other financial institutions to enable near-instant money transfers with on-demand liquidity and end-to-end tracking on a blockchain.
PNC Bank, simply known as PNC, is also the fifth largest bank by number of branches and the 4th largest with the most ATMs in the United States. The bank services over 8 million customers in 19 states in areas including retail, consumer-ended banking and corporate banking. While retail services (including consumer and small business banking) is predominantly offered to clients in the eastern states, PNC offers corporate and institutional banking across the country.
Ripple said in its announcement:
“Ripple’s technology will have an immediate impact on each of those groups, enabling PNC’s commercial clients to receive payments from overseas banks in real time.”
As an example, a commercial client of a business transaction situated in Pennsylvania will be able to receive payments from a UK buyer against the invoices instantly, Ripple explained, enabling the client or business owner to benefit from managing their working capital and accounts receivable.
The addition of PNC is arguably Ripple’s biggest banking scoop for its flagship product, which notably doesn’t use the XRP token, a cryptocurrency developed by Ripple. xRapid, a separate Ripple product which uses XRP for real-time liquidity in international transactions has seen relatively fewer adopters compared to the 100 (+) member-strong RippleNet.
While the likes of Western Union have trailed the XRP-based product for money transfers, a wider commercial application for xRapid is only a month away, according to Ripple’s chief of regulatory relations in APAC and the Middle East Sagar Sarbhai.
“I am very confident that in the next one month or so you will see some good news coming in where we launch the product live in production,” Sarbhai said in an interview earlier this week. Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse has previously claimed that “dozens” of banks will be using XRP by the end of 2019.
