Leading Vietnamese Bank Joins RippleNet to Boost Cross-Border Remittances

Orient Commercial Joint Stock Bank (OCB), a major Vietnamese bank with assets worth $4.6 billion, has joined RippleNet as a strategic partner after a 10-month wait. OCB will leverage Ripple's blockchain technology to enhance cross-border payments.

Deploying Ripple’s blockchain technology

As revealed by Phong Nguyen, OCB’s head of fintech and digital banking, the partnership will enable the bank to employ Ripple’s blockchain technology to cut down costs incurred in cross-border payments and remittances.

He noted:

“With this investment in blockchain technology which is powered by Ripple, we target to apply new technology to business in order to cut down expenses, boost productivity and bring transparency and the best service to customers with Remittance & Cross-border payment - competitive fee, instant-payment.”

OCB views this development as an incredible milestone because it has been a 10-month journey, which has involved aggressive exploration, building business use cases, and mobilizing multi-division resources.

Vietnamese consumers to benefit

Nguyen passed his gratitude to Ripple’s Singaporean team for their commitment and dedication. He alluded to the fact that the partnership would offer Vietnamese consumers impressive lending services.

By leveraging Ripple’s blockchain technology, OCB will offer its retail and SME clients more transparent and faster cross-border payments and remittances. Ripple is continuously making notable strides in delivering global financial inclusion amid an economic turmoil triggered by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Recently, it announced that it was contributing $10 million to Mercy Corps to enable it to leverage digital assets as it strives to achieve financial inclusion amid an emerging market. The announcement was made during Ripple’s 2020 Swell conference, an annual conference that converges the world's most trusted voices in payments, financial services, blockchain technology, and policy.

Furthermore, Ripple recently revealed its third annual Blockchain in Payments Report, which identified that blockchain adoption is key to successful growth strategies for financial institutions. Therefore, the company sees blockchain as a stepping stone towards its global financial inclusion quest. 

Image source: Shutterstock