On Monday (February 4th), Forbes published this year’s Fintech 50, its list of the Most Innovative Fintech Companies In 2019, and six blockchain companies (including Ripple) managed to make the list. In this article, we take a closer look at Ripple.

The Forbes report says that six blockchain companies in this list—Axoni, Bitfury, Circle, Coinbase, Gemini, and Ripple—will “undoubtedly form some unusual alliances as they evolve past competing against other blockchain startups, to competing in mainstream finance against long-established players.”

In September 2012, Chris Larsen, Jed McCaleb founded a San Francisco-based FinTech startup called OpenCoin. In July 2013, McCaleb left Ripple. On September 26, 2013, OpenCoin was renamed to Ripple Labs (“Ripple”).

Ripple is currently backed by some of the best-known names in venture capital including Andreesen Horowitz, CME Ventures, Google Ventures, Santander InnoVentures (which might explain why Santadar was the first major bank to join RippleNet, Ripple’s global payments network), and SBI Group.

Here is how Forbes describes Ripple:

“Its blockchain based global settlements network aims to replace SWIFT, the interbank messaging platform that has long connected nearly every bank in the world. Ripple has also launched a service that lets companies make cross-border payments in XRP, the cryptocurrency created by its founders, which was recently second to Bitcoin in value.”

And gives the following as Ripple’s bona fides:

“200 RippleNet customers, including Bank of America and American Express”

Of course, inclusion in the Forbes Fintech 50 is the only honor/award that Ripple has received in the past few years. Here are a few of the others:

As reported here in CryptoGlobe, Ripple had a great 2018, and making the Fintech 50 list for a second time in the past five years should insipre its passionate and hard-working employees to help the company achieve even greater heights in 2019.

Featured Image Courtesy of Ripple