Not just in relation to Ripple (XRP), all in all, Africa is rarely in the crypto world news. China, Korea, and the US tend to get all the headlines. The fact remains that Africa is one of the world’s regions in which the blockchain has penetrated more into the mainstream because of the continent’s lack of financial institutions as widespread as Europe, Asia, or the Americas. Cardano is a good example.

It’s considered to be the world’s leading project when it comes to third generation blockchain, and it’s been looking to penetrate African markets instead of Europe, Asia or the Americas. In other words: Africa is a very important geopolitically for crypto because at night a candle’s brighter than the sun.

It seems Ripple has seen the writing on the African wall because it’s going for it.

Because of all this darkness surrounding Africa, you probably have never heard about Flutterwave. It’s a company that aims to provide a unified payment solution for the whole African continent in such a way that it can be connected with the world.

Checkout how we integrated blockchain into our global payment infrastructure ???? https://t.co/Wy871H33LT

— Flutterwave (@theflutterwave) October 18, 2018

The firm has more than 50 African banks as partners, and they process payments for other companies as important as Booking or Uber. It’s been around for two years only, and in that short period, it’s managed to become a huge payments hub in Africa.

And now, Flutterwave has announced it is joining the Ripple Net. That is the network of financial institutions all over the world that are using Ripple’s blockchain and software platforms designed to transfer money internationally quickly, safely and incredibly cheaply.

So far Ripple’s primary emphasis has been focused on Asia and Europe (Banco Santander, for instance, is already settling international payments using Ripple’s technology). While it already had a few partners in Africa, Flutterwave is a massive step because it’s used directly by lots of banks, and indirectly by lots of customers (such as Uber users) so this will create a lot more demand and trade volume for the XRP token.

Flutterwave is going to adopt xCurrent, to be specific. This is one of Ripple’s financial solutions which aims to help banks, remittance services, and financial institutions to perform international payments (even at the micro level).

This is more good news for Ripple in a year in which it’s had lots of great news, even if the price and the market have remained bearish. Ripple’s XRP (the native crypto asset of the Ripple company) currently stands at $0.46 per token, and it’s been getting close to take over Ethereum as the world’s second-biggest currency by market capitalization (in fact, it’s been momentarily over ETH several times over the last couple of weeks). This kind of news can only make things better for Ripple.

Let’s remember something: At this point, most of the fluctuations in the crypto market are due to speculative pressure more than to supply and demand issues. Coins like Ripple’s XRP (or Stellar, Cardano, Tron) are looking for ways to achieve mainstream adoption through usefulness. This will change the game in the market because, as these projects get adoption, they will become useful in real-world terms.

That is the thing that will create demand for their tokens, and the demand will make prices go up because of usefulness instead of speculation. This is the mechanism that will turn cryptocurrencies into actual money, and Ripple is leading the way.

For real-time trade alerts and a daily breakdown of the crypto markets, sign up for Elite membership!

Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Global Coin Report and/or its affiliates, employees, writers, and subcontractors are cryptocurrency investors and from time to time may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency and read our full disclaimer.

Image courtesy of Kolibri5/Pixabay