Royal Bank of Scotland Taps Ripple Labs in Tech Revamp

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is working in tandem with Ripple Labs in its 3.5 billion GBP technological revamp. In particular, the London bank is looking into the proof-of-concept technology offered by Ripple in order to prevent IT failures from losing transaction records.

This was announced by the bank’s administrative officer Simon McNamara during a webinar, following a technological glitch that caused 600,000 payments to disappear. RBS said the affected payments to and from customers’ accounts would be made by Saturday at the latest, as account holders bombarded the bank with complaints over missing transactions including wages, tax credits and disability allowances.

Ripple Labs Technology

The technology offered by Ripple Labs is similar to that of the bitcoin blockchain, which is a public ledger of transactions using the cryptocurrency. These records are immutable and irreversible, as it takes a large network of computers solving complex algorithms to make updates on the ledger.

RBS had been plagued with several IT failures in the past, prompting the bank to start a three-year tech revamp program. The bank is looking to boost its image as a leader in innovation by making an integration with Ripple Labs technology, something that other British banks haven’t adopted yet.

London isn’t new to bitcoin innovations though, as the city is actually touted as one of the places where bitcoin is widely accepted. Even the British central bank has taken an open-minded stance to cryptocurrency developments, with its call for information on cryptocurrencies and its continuous approach to understanding bitcoin.

“I don’t know what’s going to succeed. What I’m certain of is that we are going to see blockchain solutions, peer-to-peer solutions emerging in our industry and we want to be close to that development,” mentioned McNamara.

Other banks have already been working with Ripple Labs in other parts of the globe to integrate cryptocurrency-related innovations to their banking strategies.