Red pill me on XRP

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Ripple seems to have a great idea behind it. Swift has huge problems in terms of international money transfers and Ripple offers faster (verified in seconds compared to SWIFT's DAYS), cheaper (like $0.0003 per transaction), and more transparent (cuts out the Middle men in international money transfers) system of money transfer.

Not only that but it has big backing. It has a lot of competition from traditional fintech startups and Bitcoin based software and the R3 consortium, but looking at its progress in japan is astonishing. Right now Ripple is used in 40% of consumer banking in Japan and a pilot test by a consortium of 47 banks was a success (12 more have since joined). A commercial release of the technology is expected in October 2017.

Once XRP becomes more liquid, it can even be used to help banks with liquidity problems. Rather than having one bank store dead cash at a foreign institution it intends to transfer money to, a quick conservation from USD into XRP and XRP into JPY, GBP, EUR, any currency you need is all it takes and the transaction can be verified in seconds.

The Global Payments Steering Group is working on establishing a clear framework of rights and obligations for banks using Ripple's technology and its founding members included Bank of America, Santander, and the royal bank of Canada. On top of those, today it also partners with standard chartered, national Australia bank, Mitsubishi UFJ financial group, and the Canadian imperial bank of commerce.

They currently serve 75 customers, which is small compared to SWIFT's 11,000, but makes it a leader among its competitors.

What's the catch?

Source on my claims: https://www.americanbanker.com/news/inside-ripples-plan-to-make-money-move-as-fast-as-information