Fidor Bank integrates with Ripple's payment protocol

Currency agnostic crypto-payments system Ripple announced a partnership with Munich-based internet bank Fidor Bank AG today. The San Francisco payment network provider will supply Fidor with support for its cutting-edge payment protocol, which is fully compatible with bitcoin, alt-coins and fiat currencies. Fidor is no stranger to the cryptocurrency community, partnering with virtual currency exchange Kraken last year.

In the press release about the partnership, CEO of Fidor Bank AG Matthias Kröner said:

Ripple enables us to securely and instantly send money anywhere in the world at no additional cost and through the same customer facing products and relationships we offer today. With Ripple, we can deliver a superior banking experience at a fraction of the time and cost traditionally expected of a financial institution.”

Should the integration prove successful, Fidor will be able to offer instant international currency exchanges with far less “friction” in the process. Current banking systems require a complex series of trust-based transactions through fee-charging middleman services for such services. The Fidor/Ripple experiment may well be the first of many banking industry adoptions of cryptocurrency innovations in coming years.

The partnership also goes a long way towards raising Ripple’s profile. Although technically a cryptocurrency, Ripple’s esoteric nature as a payment platform has kept it from gaining the same level of media attention as bitcoin and other value-oriented virtual currencies.