Graham Bright Discusses XRP’s Role in Payment Processing

In a recent tweet, Edward Farina, Head of Social Adoption at XRP Healthcare (XRPH), unearthed an interview in which Graham Bright, who served as Regional Manager for more than 20 years at SWIFT, discussed XRP’s potential involvement in SWIFT’s payment processing.

Even though the interview is at least three years old, it recently resurfaced in the XRP community, generating significant interest. Layah Heilpern asked Bright about the possibility of cryptocurrencies replacing SWIFT.

Bright, who had devoted two decades of his career to SWIFT, emphasized the importance of SWIFT as the financial industry’s primary communications system.

While SWIFT conducts financial services, it does not excel in real-time transactions and instant fund visibility, he emphasized. Bright compared the traditional store-and-forward system employed by SWIFT to the emergence of crypto networks.

Specifically, he mentioned that crypto networks prioritize the instantaneous, real-time transfer of funds and offer transparent visibility of transactions.

However, Bright made it clear that he does not anticipate cryptocurrencies, specifically Ripple’s XRP-based network, to replace SWIFT completely.

Instead, he envisioned cryptocurrencies such as XRP as supplementary networks for institutions requiring real-time capabilities.

Also, Bright mentioned SWIFT was evolving to incorporate real-time functionalities to ensure it remains pertinent in a changing financial landscape.

Meanwhile, the former SWIFT employee indicated the potential integration of XRP into the SWIFT network. He believes the Ripple network can play a role in SWIFT’s foreign exchange transactions.

In his words:

“We may also see Ripple XRP moving across the Swift Network as a currency when we’re perhaps using something like FX.”

The SWIFT-Ripple partnership, which the XRP community had anticipated after Bright’s comment, never manifested. SWIFT has partnered with Chainlink to potentially use the LINK token for crypto payment processing.