61 banks merged: Ripple based payment application begins

According to Ripple's March 6 blog, the Japanese Consortium of Banks plans to implement an internal instant payment application called MoneyTap, using Ripple technology.
It is a consortium of 61 banks under SBI Ripple Asia. It covers 80% of Japan's banking activity. The CEO of SBI Ripple Asia, Takashi Okita, said:

"We believe that the Bank's reliability and security capabilities will reduce problems with payments and provide customers with the experience of faster, more reliable and cost effective payment."

Three banks in the consortium - SBI Net Sumishin Bank, Suruga Bank and Resona Bank - will begin to use the application from the fall, and other banks will eventually participate. "MoneyTap" will provide users' daily purchases.

Ripple is currently focusing on establishing contacts with banks to use payment technology for a long time. In February, Ripple announced its co-operation with two new financial services. One of them is the Central Bank of Saudi Arabia and the country's banks to benefit from off-shore operations. The other one was created by Western Union, which wants to test Ripple's Blockchain based payment system.

This month, a South Korean bank also announced that it would use the Ripple system.