National Bank of Egypt (NBE) has announced plans to harness blockchain technology from Ripple for a remittance corridor with the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Egypt’s largest bank will work with financial services firm LuLu International Exchange in the UAE to serve the large number of Egyptians working in the Middle Eastern nation, according to Ripple.
The remittance market for Egypt has great potential, with the North African country receiving USD 24 billion in 2020 alone, Ripple said, citing third-party data. In joining Ripple’s distributed ledger-based payments network called RippleNet, the bank and LuLu seek to access ‘cheaper, quicker and more reliable’ payments, according to the announcement.
According to Yahoo Finance, the firms do not make clear if they will use the XRP cryptocurrency (developed in large part by Ripple) to move liquidity.