The worldwide payment platform and foreign exchange operator, Finablr is based in the United Arab Emirates and has recently joined Ripple’s RippleNet blockchain network according to a press release posted yesterday (February 11th). Finablr’s network brands, UAE Exchange and payment platform Unimoni will use the blockchain-based platform that Ripple have provided to follow through will real-time transactions to Thailand. In addition to this, the company has said that it plans to expand the services to other countries in the future. As reported by CoinTelegraph: “The first partner in the service major Thai bank, Siam Commercial Bank, letting UAE Exchange and Unimoni customers globally send money to Thailand. The bank has been working with RippleNet since September 2018, when it became the platform’s first financial institution to trial a key feature dubbed “multi-hop.” The managing director of South Asia and MENA at Ripple Navin Gupta believes that joining a blockchain network with more than 100-member banks and financial institutions will let UAE Exchange provide more efficient services to its clients. This time last year, the UAE Exchange first partnered with Ripple for cross-border payments. Near the end of 2018, the exchange was allegedly the biggest payments company in the Middle East to use RippleNet and revealed that blockchain based remittances to Asia would be available by the first quarter of 2019. It seems that the UAE is always looking into crypto and blockchain related technologies. The nation recently agreed to cooperate with Saudi Arabia to launch a cross-border digital currency which was further revealed by the UAE central bank that the digital currency will only be available for a limited number of banks in the two countries. This is down the technology being tested. Aside from the UAE Exchange and Unimoni, Finablr also owns brands like Xpress Money, Travelex, Remit2India, Swych and Ditto which is looking to deploy blockchain technology across some of their services too. “While most clients have opted to use its payments infrastructure without the XRP cryptocurrency that Ripple helped develop, Euro Exim Bank became the first bank to publicly announce it is using XRP for cross-border payments in early January.” In the past, one subsidiary of Siam Commercial Bank had partnered with global management consultancy companies Accenture to launch a blockchain tool aimed at supply chains.