Ripple (XRP) hires former Mastercard executive to lead European operations and grow RippleNet network
by Eric Martin 
Despite its lawsuit with the SEC, the American startup Ripple (XRP) actively continues its development, particularly in Europe.
The company has announced the appointment of Sendi Young as Managing Director for Europe, where she will be responsible for overseeing European operations as well as the development of the RippleNet network.
Sendi Young previously worked at Mastercard where she spent five years in management positions in strategy, marketing, banking-fintech partnerships and business development.
She also led the global FinTech & Digital segment for Mastercard’s Data & Services business, helping banks embrace real-time payments, open banking and artificial intelligence, Ripple says in its announcement on its blog.
A profile that therefore seems to correspond to the mission that awaits Sendi Young at Ripple in Europe.
Sendi Young said:
“The underlying payments and banking infrastructure remain a barrier to frictionless cross-border value exchange and inclusion. I firmly believe that blockchain and crypto will be a game-changer to improve finance today, by addressing its main inefficiencies. These technologies can make the global financial system fairer, more inclusive and more transparent.”
Ripple rightly points out the importance of Europe in its business, a quarter of Ripple’s current customers are based in Europe, and since the start of the year, European transactions of RippleNet On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) have increased by 250% from 2020, representing over 40% of all ODL transactions since the start of the year.
As a reminder, RippleNet offers “connections to hundreds of financial institutions around the world through a single API to make transferring money faster, cheaper and more reliable,” says the Ripple site.
For its part, the On-Demand Liquidity ODL solution leverages the XRP token to “source liquidity during cross-border transactions, as an alternative to traditional systems”.
Asheesh Birla, Managing Director of RippleNet, said:
“The appointment of Sendi represents a huge opportunity for our European operations given his leadership experience, his deep understanding of the payments landscape and his knowledge of growing and scaling a network business.”
While the lawsuit against the SEC strongly impacted the XRP price, it did not weaken Ripple’s motivation to accelerate its international development, especially in Europe.
Ripple is planning for the future, the crypto startup has also said it plans to go public once its lawsuit is over.
An XRP price currently around $0.66 on Kraken.
