The 3 biggest crypto partnerships of 2019 so far

18 Apr, 2019

Analysis

2019 has seen the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry pick up steam after the 2018 crypto winter that left many companies out of pocket and effectively out of business. Major players continue to build new business partnerships in an attempt to push for mass adoption. These are the biggest partnerships of 2019 so far in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry.

Ripple partners with 200 financial institutions

No surprise, Ripple has continued to work with new investors and partnerships in 2018, growing their partners in 2019 to over 200 strong. Ripple looks to become the most adopted cryptocurrency in the world with their payment remittance solution.

Ripple has seen partnerships with multiple financial institutions, who have joined the company's payment network, RippleNet. Included in the latest partnerships with Ripple include Euro Exim Bank, SendFriend, JNFX, FTCS, Ahli Bank of Kuwait, Transpaygo and WorldCom Finance among several others.

Ripple looks set to disrupt major payment network SWIFT, who currently hold dominance over the market in terms of payment processing, with their partnership with over 10,000 banks. However with the speed at which Ripple is expanding, Ripple could soon become SWIFT 2.0

200+ financial institutions are leveraging RippleNet to make international payments faster, lower cost and more transparent. Learn more about our newest RippleNet customers here: https://t.co/scORZ41ngS
— Ripple (@Ripple) January 8, 2019

Stellar Lumens and IBM

Ripple is not the only company making major moves in the blockchain payments sector. Stellar Lumens has also joined the fray following their latest partnership with American multinational information technology company, IBM. The partnership will see IBM join forces with Stellar to make use of their remittance payment system called World Wire.

IBM looks to solve the issue of the unbanked, and by making use of Stellars blockchain solution, IBM will essentially be looking to challenge Ripple and their partnerships for a piece of the payments sector’s pie.

Samsung and Enjin

Samsung recently announced at the Mobile Business Summit 2019, that they would be releasing a digital wallet for their latest smartphone model, the S10. Samsung chose blockchain project Enjin as their wallet of choice. This was shown at the event with several other cryptocurrency projects included, those were Cosmee, Crypto Kitties, and Basic Attention Token (BAT).

Currently the digital wallet does not come pre-installed and is currently only available in the U.S, Canada and Korea.

The partnership is a massive step in the right direction for cell phone and cryptocurrency usage for the mass market. While the partnership is still in its infancy, it does force companies such as Huawei and Apple to consider making inroads into the cryptocurrency space or be left behind.

While the three partnerships see blockchain projects making moves into some of the largest industries in the world, with some of the biggest companies in the world, it may still be early days before actual mass adoption can be experienced through these partnerships.

New #GalaxyS10 live images leak with ‘Samsung Blockchain KeyStore’

(images via @GregiPfister89) pic.twitter.com/g0FipTooe6
— Ben Geskin (@VenyaGeskin1) January 23, 2019