Saudi Arabia’s Riyad Bank has announced a partnership with crypto giant Ripple to explore the deployment of blockchain solutions into its existing financial ecosystem. The development was announced on January 26 by Reece Merrick, Ripple’s Senior Executive Officer and Managing Director for the Middle East and Africa regions.
Under the collaboration, Saudi Arabia will make use of Ripple’s blockchain infrastructure and crypto expertise to test services like custody of digital assets and cross border payments via crypto.
Tokenization is also among the top technologies that Saudi Arabia wishes to explore with Ripple. Tokenization can be defined as the process of replacing sensitive data like card numbers and personal ID numbers with non-sensitive unique “token” representations. Tokenization is emerging as the new secure way of protecting information in large-sized data bases.
Merrick said that Ripple will primarily be working with Jeel, which is a fintech enabler and fintech sandbox parented by Riyad Bank. It tests banking-as-a-service solutions and open banking technologies.
“Ripple has signed an MoU with Jeel to explore integrating secure and efficient blockchain solutions into the national financial architecture. We are committed to demonstrating how Ripple’s enterprise-grade digital asset technology can unlock efficiencies in areas such as cross-border payments,” Merrick noted.
Jeel, commenting on the partnership, said that the development of potential blockchain solution prototypes within Jeel’s regulatory sandbox will be among priorities under this partnership with Ripple.
“By combining regulated experimentation with global blockchain expertise, we are laying the groundwork to assess scalable use cases that enhance cross-border payments and digital asset capabilities, in line with the Kingdom’s long-term digital ambitions,” said George Harrak, Chief Executive Office, Jeel.
By 2030, Saudi Arabia envisions itself to have improved its financial fabric by adopting advanced technologies like blockchain, crypto, and AI among others.
For Ripple, the Middle Eastern region has emerged as an area of focus in recent years. Just this week, Ripple joined forces with Dubai-based DXC Technologies to provide crypto-friendly infrastructure to banks.
Ripple’s RLUSD has also been recognized as an official mode of payment within Dubai and Abu Dhabi-based financial zones.