India’s largest bank joins RippleNet

• Ripple’s Navin Gupta has officially confirmed that the Indian HDFC Bank has joined RippleNet.
• HDFC Bank is the largest private sector lender in India and the largest bank in India in terms of market capitalization.

After the news was supposedly unintentionally revealed by Marcus Treacher in November 2019, Ripple‘s Managing Director of MENA, Navin Gupta, has now officially confirmed at this year’s Swell MENA conference that India’s largest bank, HDFC Bank Limited, has joined RippleNet.

As of June 2019, HDFC Bank Limited had over 100,000 employees and offers a wide range of financial products and services to over 43 million customers. HDFC Bank is the largest private sector lender in India by assets and the largest bank in India by market capitalization.

Already at last year’s Swell conference, rumours were circulating that Ripple might have added HDFC Bank among their clients. Treacher (SVP of Customer Success) revealed in an interview for “The Jay Kim Show” that the company works with numerous Indian banks. While talking about Ripple’s new partners in Asia, he also mentioned HDFC Bank:

To answer your first question. I can call out SBI, SBI Remit, in Japan, a phenomenal partner of Ripple. Coinone in South Korea. It’s great; fantastically, tremendous partner. Ripple Siam Commercial Bank and Standard Charter Bank in hometown, Singapore. Many of the Indian banks we work with: IndusInd, Kotak, YES Bank, Axis Bank – recently one, HDFC in India, QNB in Qatar, Saudi British Bank in Saudi Arabia. We’ve got NCB, Saudi Arabia, Al-Rajhi Bank.

However, it was not clear at the time in which framework the cooperation with the HDFC Bank was to take place. In the crypto-community at that time it was assumed that the partnership could be limited to B2B services, given the rather crypto-hostile regulatory policy in India.

However, as Navin Gupta announced on 12 August at the end of this year’s Swell MENA conference, HDFC Bank has joined the RippleNet. HDFC Bank will probably not use the XRP token immediately, but will at least test or use Ripple’s blockchain technology for worldwide payments. Gupta explained concretely:

But we have some special news for you that I would like to share with you all. I’m pleasesd to announce that HDFC Bank, largest private sector bank in India has joined RippleNet. They will be a key receiving partner into India and our team is incredibly exited to work with them.

India + crypto = the next ban

Ripple’s announcement may come as a surprise to many given the political climate in India. While the Supreme Court lifted the 2018 ban on trading in cryptocurrencies in March this year, rumors have been circulating in recent weeks that the Indian government may reinstate the ban.

In particular, the rumors started to spread again after Gupta’s announcement. According to anonymous sources that became public last week, India’s federal cabinet will discuss a bill that will ban cryptocurrencies. The bill will then be forwarded to parliament. Whether and how Ripple’s partnership with the HDFC Bank could be affected remains to be seen, however.