Ripple to open office in Dubai

Ripple’s Global Head of Infrastructure Innovation, Dilip Rao, recently appeared at a conference in Dubai to speak about Ripple’s plans to enter the Middle East.

Rao revealed that Ripple was going to be setting up an office in Dubai “before the end of the year”. He also provided an introduction to the Internet of Value and spoke about the existence of XRP and Ripple’s other products within the regulatory environment of the area.

Speaking about Ripple’s goals in the Middle East, he stated that “the company’s focus initially is on cross-border payments because that’s where there is the most friction. In this part of the world, there is a huge requirement for cross-border transactions that will support the economy both within the region, but also in terms of business that you conduct with the rest of the world.”

He confirmed that Ripple has signed up close to 200 institutions “around the world” with “many of them” from the Middle East.

Rao revealed that Ripple’s clients included the largest Islamic bank in Saudi Arabia known as Al-Rajhi, and Kuwait Finance House, calling the Middle East the “fastest growing marketplace”.

“If you wanted to send money out of UAE today, it can be a costly and a slow exercise in some parts of the world”, he added

“We are now talking about micropayments a tenth of a cent. The existing infrastructure is unable to cope with these very low value, high volume transactions, almost 50 billion a year, it is now a requirement to build a new set of infrastructure to be able to support this kind of a digital economy”, Rao elaborated.