Published on the 08/04/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
US payments start-up Ripple is looking for software talent in Sydney, which will host its newly announced Asia Pacific subsidiary…
Ripple has been established to allow organisations to build payments networks over the internet to allow straight-through payments processing. The Sydney-based Asia Pacific operation will initially target Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan.
Managing director Dilip Rao and his team will work with banks, money transmitters and clearing houses to build payments networks using the Ripple protocol.
At the heart of the system is an online payment ledger which keeps tracks of payments. Rao said that building the two way ledger between two organisations was relatively trivial, but that the staff he was now recruiting would help companies integrate that with their backend systems.
The online ledger is the heart of the Ripple system and relies on trust between the two parties at each end.
Organisations can transfer digital currency known as Ripples (XRP) or represent fiat currencies as debt on the ledger, with payments then concluded, where required, using domestic settlement systems.
There are 100 billion XRPs on issue, and no more will be created, though Ripples can be divided into smaller units.
Payments provider Earthport and three banks in the US and Germany have announced they will use the technology to underpin real-time payments.
While Ripple, which has received financial backing from high profile investors including Google Ventures and Andreesen Horowitz, has attracted a good deal of attention for its attempts to harness the internet to strip friction out of the payments process, concerns have been raised over the privacy and security of the process and the overarching reliance on trust between participants.
The company may also find it challenging to source local talent as its timing co-incides with the establishment of two new start-up financial technology hubs, also in Sydney.
Payments business Tyro has opened its FinTech hub in Sydney’s CBD to compete with the recently announced and bank-backed Stone and Chalk financial technology start-up space, both of which will compete with Ripple for tech talent.
