XRP Price Prediction as Ripple Executive Blasts Old Cross-Border Payments Model

XRP price was stuck in a narrow range even as Bitcoin and other top altcoins rose. Ripple token was trading at $1.3670 on Tuesday, up slightly from the year-to-date low $1.1175. So, will the token rebound or crash as a senior executive makes the case for Ripple usage in payments?

A Top Ripple Executive Has Made the Case for XRP and RLUSD

In an X post, Reece Merrick, the Senior Executive Officer and Managing Director for Middle East and Africa, made the case for why Chief Financial Officers (CFO) managing global payouts should leverage Ripple’s infrastructure.

He believes that the old model of using Swift and other banking solutions is slow, often with 1 to 3 days of settlement times. It is also highly expensive, involves locked liquidity, and with zero visibility mid-transfer.

On the other hand, companies using digital payments infrastructure, especially the one using Ripple, experience near-instant settlement, lower fees, real-time transparency, and no need for pre-funded accounts.

This view is correct, which explains why the stablecoin industry is seeing strong growth this year, with the total market capitalization of these tokens rising to over $308 billion. Ripple USD has over $1.3 billion in assets.

For example, a Ripple USD (RLUSD) transaction on Ethereum or XRP Ledger costs just a few cents to complete, with the completion time being less than 2 minutes.

Ripple Labs has made some major milestones in the past few months as it seeks to become a major player in the payments industry. For example, it launched RLUSD, which has become one of the biggest GENIUS Act-compliant stablecoins.

It also launched Ripple Prime, a service that offers prime brokerage solutions, which include multi-asset clearing and over-the-counter (OTC) trading, and custody solutions.

The company also acquired GTreasury, a company that helps other firms and high-net-worth clients manage their cash. All these solutions can leverage XRP and RLUSD to save time and money.

Increased usage of the RLUSD would be highly bullish for the XRP price, especially when it is on the XRP Ledger network. It would increase the volume and fees, which will lead to more XRP token burns.

XRP is Facing Major Headwinds

Despite his optimism, XRP is facing major headwinds. The first main one is that its payments solution is facing major competition from Circle. Circle’s USDC has achieved over $80 billion in assets, while its 30-day transaction volume has soared to over $7 trillion.

At the same time, it launched the Circle Payment Network (CPN), which has become a major player in the payments industry. It has already enrolled over 50 large companies, and more are on the way. Circle has already demonstrated how companies can leverage its payments solutions to save money and send money with speed.

The other challenge is that the demand for spot XRP ETFs had largely disappeared a few months ago. These funds initially attracted over $600 million in assets in the first month and $500 million in the second month.

This momentum has waned, with the funds shedding over $30 million last month. They have added just $11 million in assets this month, bringing the total net assets to $959 million.

XRP Price Prediction: Technical Analysis

The three-day chart shows that the Ripple price has slumped from a high of $3.67 in July last year to $1.3695 today. It remains below the descending trendline that links its highest swings since July last year.

The coin has also formed a bearish pennant pattern and is now in the triangle section. It has moved below the 50-day moving average and the 61.8% Fibonacci Retracement level.

Therefore, the coin will likely have a strong bearish breakdown in the coming weeks, potentially to the key support level at $1.1175.