[Updated] XRP HAS NOT BEEN snubbed BY MAS. Ripple’s XRP takes another blow from a major banking institution

Alex Dovbnya

The MAS rep struck a blow at JPMorgan, the number one US bank that recently launched its own stablecoin JPM coin

Known as the country’s operating central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is not going to land on the ever-growing list of financial technology that has teamed up with the payment network Ripple. As Cointelegraph reports, MAS doesn’t see much potential in Ripple’s technology.

The Jasper Ubin Project

The news comes just a day after MAS and the Bank of Canada teamed up to make cross-border payments more cost-effective using blockchain. Singapore has its own DLT-powered domestic payment network (Project Ubin) that will be linked to Canada’s own experimental network (Project Jasper). The Jasper Ubin project partners also included JPMorgan, the US banking giant that recently joined Microsoft’s new blockchain service.

A blockchain party without XRP?

The aforementioned announcement caused a lot of buzz in the crypto community as it is clear that central banks and large financial institutions are now turning to blockchain to ensure interoperability. Ripple could benefit greatly from this new trend as its payment network RippleNet has already surpassed 200 high profile customers. However, MAS is not interested in Ripple’s native token, XRP.

One thing that was very convincing for us is the overall efficiency gain in cross-border payments. We don’t see much in the Ripple bank digital currency, but definitely still a lot of hope that we can fix a lot of inefficiencies […] when it comes to cross-border payments, “said Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief Fintech Officer at MAS, during MIT’s 2019 Business of Blockchain event held on May 2nd.

xCurrent, not xRapid

This is the second major snub for Ripple in less than a month. As U.Today reported on April 13th, Japanese banking giant Resona Bank has pulled the plug on MoneyTap, the payment app powered by Ripple’s xCurrent. In the meantime, banks are still wary of Ripple’s new xRapid product, which is actually using XRP to make cross-border payments.