Saudi Arabia will test the technique of Ripple payments

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The pilot with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority announced today, that the second central bank is working with the startup, after the Bank of England, the central bank of the United States, began working with Ripple last year. The word of the last deal first appeared this week after comments from CEO Brad Garlinghouse at the Blockchain Connect Conference in San Francisco.

That the banks in Saudi Arabia would be looking for xCurrent pilot may not be surprising, given recent interest in Ripple's product by other well-known financial institutions. Earlier this month, it was reported that Santander is in the process of deploying a mobile payment application that uses the xCurrent technology (which does not rely on Ripple’s XRP token), with Spain, Brazil, the UK and Poland, which act as the initial markets for this release.

The announcement also comes a day after news appeared that UAE exchange, a large money transfer company in the United Arab Emirates, has signed a contract to use the startup's RippleNet product to manage cross-border payments.

Separate from the Saudi Arabia news are reports about tests being conducted by remittance giant Western Union, which confirmed in an earnings call yesterday that it is piloting the startup's technology. Today, Fortune reported that, according to the representative, the company is testing payments using XRP.

Ripple said back in 2015 that it was working with Western Union, although the remittance company didn’t comment at the time.