Ripple, the global provider of financial settlement solutions, today announced the addition of several financial institutions to its growing network. Standard Chartered, National Australia Bank (NAB), Mizuho Financial Group (MHFG), BMO Financial Group, Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) and Shanghai Huarui Bank are now among the global banks that have adopted Ripple to improve their cross-border payments.

“2016 has proven to be the year where the most forward-thinking financial institutions are actually using blockchain technologies for payments and settlement rather than as an experiment,” said Ripple CEO and co-founder Chris Larsen. “The continued growth of the Ripple network represents a major endorsement of our open approach to connecting the world’s banks and their customers. Together we are building a modern payments system to enable new economic opportunities and the seamless flow of value around the world.”

These leading banks are taking advantage of Ripple’s distributed financial technology to drastically reduce the time and cost of settlement while enabling new types of high-volume, low-value global transactions for their customers. While the use cases vary, these financial institutions have successfully transferred actual money via Ripple, and all are aiming to implement the solutions commercially. For example, Shanghai Huarui Bank is working with Ripple on a new commercial cross-border payment service for its growing retail customer base so they can send money internationally in real-time and at a much lower cost.

Today’s news follows SBI Ripple Asia’s announcement last month of the creation of a Japanese consortium of 15 banks in a new network that will use Ripple’s technology for payments and settlement. SBI Ripple Asia projects that the 15 inaugural members will increase the size of the consortium to 30 banks and that the new service will go live in spring of 2017.

Existing Ripple customers include Santander, UniCredit, UBS, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Westpac Banking Corporation, ReiseBank, CIBC, National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), ATB Financial, and Fidor Bank, among others. As the only provider of enterprise blockchain solutions, Ripple’s growing, global network includes 15 of the top 50 global banks, 10 banks in commercial deal phases, and over 30 bank pilots completed, among many others also using Ripple’s solutions.

Several of the banks commented on their use of Ripple technology:

“With over $155 trillion of cross-border payments being made between businesses annually, it is crucial that we continue to innovate to make international payments easier and faster, not just for our clients but also for the future of the payments industry,” said Gautam Jain, Global Head, Digitization and Client Access, Transaction Banking, Standard Chartered. “As a leading international bank committed to facilitating trade, commerce and investments, this partnership will go a long way in progressing our digitization agenda to develop innovative solutions for our clients.”

“We view blockchain as a competitive advantage that allows us to provide differentiated products, serve the on-demand expectations of our existing clients, and grow our customer base,” said Andrew Fang, General Manager & Head of Innovation and Research at Shanghai Huarui Bank. “For example, using the Ripple solution, we are working on a new commercial payment service for retail customers that will allow them to send money from China to the U.S. and other countries in real-time.”

“SCB’s vision is to embrace new technologies to provide improved quality and more cost-effective service to our customers,” said Colin Dinn, Chief Technology Officer at Siam Commercial Bank. “With Ripple, SCB looks forward to leveraging new blockchain technologies to provide a significantly faster and more convenient cross-border payment service to our customers.”

To learn more about Ripple’s solutions and relevant use cases for financial institutions, please visit Ripple.com.