US Blockchain Company Ripple Raises $55 Mln, Investors Include Major Banks

Thursday, Blockchain company Ripple announced that it had raised $55 mln in funding. Accenture Ventures, SCB Digital Ventures, the venture arm of Siam Commercial Bank and Santander Innoventures are just a few of the investors who participated in the Series B funding.

Additionally, Ripple has secured partnerships with major banks, including Standard Chartered, BMO Financial Group, and Shanghai Huarui Bank.

In the near future Ripple plans to partner with even more banks, which are planned to use the service it provides to improve cross-border payments.

Overall, Ripple has received over $93 million in funding.

Making a network

The system Ripple develops will support escrow contracts, to help banks speed up their dealings with one another. The banks can also use it to help big companies make payments to their smaller partners worldwide. Without services like Ripple, it remains expensive. At the moment Ripple claims to be the only company capable of providing such services to banks.

Today, the Ripple network involves 15 important banks, such as former Westpac, National Australia Bank (NAB), Mizuho Financial Group (MHFG), and Siam Commercial Bank.

However, there are several other projects related to Blockchain, which allow companies to transfer and keep records of assets over the Web.

Among those are Chain and R3 which respectively help financial institutions build alternatives to their messaging systems and record transactions on a private ledger.