For banks to stay relevant, they have to advance with the times, this is where Ripple has set it sights with XRP cryptocurrency. Ripple has a long history since before the cryptocurrency craze, they began in 2004 as RipplePay. Ryan Fugger, the developer of RipplePay had a vision to create a decentralized global community that could have peer to peer payment methods. In 2011, Jed McCaleb initiated their process towards creating a decentralized currency, opposite of Bitcoin, the goal would be to give consensus decisions among the community more power than the miners. The following year, Mcaleb joined Chris Larsen(Founder of E-Pay) and approached Ryan Fugger to create OpenCoin. From here, they began developing the Ripple Protocol.
Benefits to Ripple:
-Provide direct party to party transactions
-Speed of transactions
-Consensus decisions within the community have power over miners
As of today, June 4, 2017 Ripple holds partnerships with the following institutions;
Accenture, Akbank, ATB Financial, Axis Bank, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), BMO Financial Group, Cambridge Global Payments, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), CBW Bank, CGI Group, Cross River Bank, Davis + Henderson (D+H), Deloitte, Earthport, Expertus, eZforex, Fidor Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Mizuho Financial Group (MHFG), National Australia Bank (NAB), National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), ReiseBank, Santander, SBI Holdings, SBI Remit, Shanghai Huarui Bank, Siam Commercial Bank, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (SEB), Standard Chartered, Star One Credit Union, Tas Group, TemenosUBS, UniCredit Group, Volante Technologies, Yantra Financial Technologies, and Yes Bank.
Ripple is experimenting with another 60+ institutions including, the tenth richest bank in the world, CommonWealth of Australia Bank, per BitcoinMagazine.com. Link> https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/commonwealth-bank-australia-launch-ripple-payments-soon-1432850165/
We are seeing interesting times, with lots of growth and potential problem solving breakthrough technology with cryptocurrency. Banks are serving in their own interests by participating and morphing with the times. It looks like they are going to be of use, but will not have the sort of grip that they have on people today. Many in the community don't like the idea of Banks being involved in cryptocurrency, but that is reality.
The sort of power and capital that banks have today, they will use it to stay up to date and with a hand in the profits. This is no different than anyone else out there. You cannot prove me wrong on that one.
Ripple has a long history, and people that believe in the product, and have for a long time. The years of experience among the men in this space is a plus. They have a terrific background, that is totally suited for success in this next phase of technology. Many of the coins out there are scams, started by amateurs. I see Ripple as a long term investment that can do exactly as it's name insinuates of it, RIPPLE.