Coingate Integrates Ripple (XRP) to Enable Payment at 4,500 Stores Worldwide

Coingate, the global cryptocurrency payment gateway providing reliable crypto payments infrastructure to more than 4,500 merchants around the world, now supports Ripple (XRP) payments. The payment platform announced the integration in a blog post, proclaiming the addition of XRP came from a great deal of demand from the XRP community.

“XRP coin owners can now use it as a means of payment at more than 4,500 shops online! Whether you want to purchase a VPN, video game or anything else, you are more than welcome to do that!”

Coingate also took their excitement to Twitter:

With Coingate now supporting XRP for payments, the newfound integration marks one of the first and perhaps the largest payment gateways that processes XRP natively. The company believes this integration will not only significantly boost XRPs utility, but also bring more customers to their merchants.

Vendors opting to receive XRP payments have the option to instantly settle their revenue in Euros (EUR), Bitcoin (BTC), or Ethereum (ETH), or to keep their funds in XRP.

Coingate Is Confident in Ripple’s XRP Cryptocurrency

Per Coingate’s blog post, the company emphasized their confidence in Ripple’s trustworthiness, decentralization, and blockchain technology.

The post highlighted that XRP is not an ordinary cryptocurrency, as the XRP ledger has multiple validators around the globe that maintain the network using the Ripple protocol consensus algorithm (RPCA). They believe this blockchain technology is superior to the industry standard, as XRP tokens are all pre-mined, resulting in quick verification times as well as secure and cheap payments.

Coingate also recognizes that XRP has been criticized for its centralization, but holds that this is no longer accurate. Further explaining, they highlight Ripple’s decentralization strategy which is bringing in more 3rd party validators to the XRP ledger:

“For each two trusted and highly secure nodes, one node run by developers will be removed. It will further decentralize the network and scale it to better performance at the same time. In fact, to further accelerate the decentralization of the XRP network, we are now running our own XRP Ledger validator!”

Users Can Now Buy XRP Via Coingate

In addition to supporting XRP for payments to over 4,500 merchants, Coingate has also launched a token purchase service that supports multiple fiat-to-XRP payment methods.

For instance, users can now buy XRP with a SEPA bank transfer, mobile balance, and QQPay via the Coingate dashboard. However, these payment methods require users to register and create an account with Coingate.

Unregistered users can buy XRP with a debit/credit card, or with e-wallets such as Neteller or Skrill. This process is extremely quick and easy, requiring only a simple know your customer (KYC) check-up.

What do you think about XRP? Is the digital asset really as decentralized and superior as Coingate says? Will this newfound XRP integration be the start of more XRP payment integrations to come? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.