Ripple’s XRP Isn’t Making Western Union’s Payments Cheaper

[bbc.reporter]

Did you see what Fortune did there? They made a clickbait title and quoted the CEO of Western Union that said Ripple's xRapid product is more expensive than Western Union. But read further to the highlighted post and you can see why this is clickbait hehehe.

I hate to defend Ripple, I reckon it is a centralized token platform, not a real coin but the mainstream media should be more responsible in the way they release the news.



Ripple has long touted its blockchain technology—and the cryptocurrency XRP, of which it still owns a majority—as a faster and cheaper way to move money internationally. But Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek said that while his company is still experimenting with Ripple’s product xRapid—which uses XRP as a conduit to transfer money between foreign currencies—for payment settlements, it has not saved money so far.

“We are always criticized that Western Union is not cost-efficient, blah blah blah, but we did not see that part of the efficiency yet during our tests,” Ersek told Fortune in an interview Wednesday at the Economic Club of New York.

“The practical matter is it’s still too expensive,” Ersek added, noting that Western Union would only be interested in adopting XRP for payments if it proved that it could lower the company’s costs.

Indeed, Western Union has sent just 10 payments using xRapid to date—far too few to reap significant results, according to Asheesh Birla, Ripple’s senior vice president of product.

“If they were to move volume at scale, then maybe you would see something, but with 10, it’s not surprising that they’re not seeing cost savings,” Birla said. “They do millions of transactions a month, and I’m not surprised that with 10 transactions it didn’t have earth-shattering results.”

Read the full article http://fortune.com/2018/06/13/ripple-xrp-cryptocurrency-western-union/

[tsaroz]

Western Union are muggers.
They charge insane amount of money when people need a quick and omnipresent option. They are looting for years.
Online payment gateways paypal, skrill or likes are much more cheaper than it but are hassle doing on the go and are not present everywhere.
Cryptocurrencies are the solutions but the problem arises again for cashing out. So, we either need a great deal with banks like Ripple is trying to make or a huge community of crypto exchangers.

[Yakamoto]

Western Union are muggers.
They charge insane amount of money when people need a quick and omnipresent option. They are looting for years.
Online payment gateways paypal, skrill or likes are much more cheaper than it but are hassle doing on the go and are not present everywhere.
Cryptocurrencies are the solutions but the problem arises again for cashing out. So, we either need a great deal with banks like Ripple is trying to make or a huge community of crypto exchangers.

Western Union has never been a legitimate company in my eyes, considering how much they charge people for what is essentially a monopoly service and something that everyone KNOWS they'd be able to do for a lot cheaper. If they had any sense of running a business like it had competition and not a pseudo-monopoly at all then they'd look to something like ripple in order to make the transactions cheaper, but we know they're bashing it to keep their service fees high and scalping more money off of everyone. Ridiculous.

[bbc.reporter]

Western Union are muggers.
They charge insane amount of money when people need a quick and omnipresent option. They are looting for years.
Online payment gateways paypal, skrill or likes are much more cheaper than it but are hassle doing on the go and are not present everywhere.
Cryptocurrencies are the solutions but the problem arises again for cashing out. So, we either need a great deal with banks like Ripple is trying to make or a huge community of crypto exchangers.

There might be a use for Ripple in the banking space to make payments cheaper. But what Ripple is not is decentralized, therefore it is not a cryptocurrency. If Ripple as a company admits that Ripple the platform is centralized, it will make them look less of a scam in the cryptospace community.