Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange and remittance network created by Ripple Labs Inc., a US-based technology company. Ripple is built upon a distributed open source protocol, and supports tokens representing fiat currency, cryptocurrency, commodities, or other units of value such as frequent flier miles or mobile minutes. Ripple purports to enable "secure, instantly and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks."Ripple operates on a decentralized network of servers that validate transactions and share the validated transactions with all servers on the network. The native digital asset of the Ripple network is XRP, which has been designed to be a digital currency for cross-border payments.
Ripple has been adopted by a number of financial institutions and has been used to facilitate cross-border payments between banks.Ripple has faced controversy and criticism for its centralized nature and for its use of XRP. Some have called XRP a security, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission is currently investigating whether it should be regulated as such.