Remittance and Ripple

[MoneyIsDebt]

I've been aiding remittance to Malaysia and Norway using bitcoins.
(If anyone is interested in transfers of bitcoin to either country, or fiat between the two, please contact me.)

I was curious as to whether Ripple could add some value here, but I fail to see how exactly. If a client wants to give me $1000 on ripple, I'd have to trust him that amount first? I don't see how any merchant / service provider could operate like that, unless they really know their clients well.

What I initially envisioned was that a network of ripples would even out money transfers back and forth with an occasional settling of imbalances through a bitcoin transfer. Can someone help me outline how this could work?
I don't see bitcoin integrated in Ripple yet, so having a settlement of debts happen without the risk of one party not reciprocating is missing.

[TheButterZone]

move topic> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=85.0

[Snowfire]

Is the balance to be kept in BTC or immediately swept out at the destination into kronor and ringgit? You could convert currency of origin to BTC at Bitstamp (or some other gateway), and then convert to Bitstamp IOUs in Ripple; if the originating funds are already BTC they could just be sent to Bitstamp as such. Then, for example, Bitstamp IOUs could be redeemed back through Bitstamp, converted to kronor, and wired to Norway. I don't know if any gateway will deal with Malaysia yet.