Brad Garlinghouse Explains Why XRP Carries Less Risk Than SWIFT Transfers
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has reignited the cross-border payments debate, arguing that XRP exposes institutions to less transaction risk than traditional SWIFT transfers despite its higher volatility, a point recently highlighted by crypto researcher SMQKE on X.
The discussion gained renewed attention after SWIFT explained why its blockchain strategy focuses on upgrading, rather than replacing, the global payment network trusted by more than 11,500 financial institutions.
Instead of building a new system, SWIFT is integrating shared-ledger technology into its existing infrastructure to combine tokenized settlement with the scale, resilience, and interoperability of today's banking network.
Responding to SWIFT's comments, SMQKE shared a document of Garlinghouse explaining that settlement time, not just price volatility, is the biggest source of risk in cross-border payments.
Ripple Positions XRP as the Faster, Lower-Risk Alternative to SWIFT
According to Garlinghouse, the average SWIFT transfer takes about three days, or roughly 270,000 seconds, to settle. During that time, institutions remain exposed to foreign exchange fluctuations, liquidity costs, counterparty risk, and settlement uncertainty, often requiring costly hedging strategies.
By contrast, XRP transactions on the XRP Ledger typically settle in just three to five seconds. Garlinghouse argued that while XRP is more volatile than fiat currencies, its extremely short holding period results in lower overall market exposure.
"If you compare 270,000 seconds in a low-volatility asset to three or four seconds in a highly volatile asset like XRP, it turns out you're taking less volatility risk with an XRP transaction than you are fiat."
He added that because XRP is only held briefly before being converted into the destination currency, institutions can largely avoid the need for expensive hedging.
"With XRP, it's happening so fast you don't really need to hedge it because you're in and out of it in a few seconds."
Is this comparison healthy? Well, it underscores two distinct approaches to the future of global payments.
SWIFT is modernizing its established banking network with tokenized settlement capabilities, while Ripple continues to promote XRP as a blockchain-native bridge asset that enables near-instant settlement without the need for pre-funded accounts.
Meanwhile, a distinctive Ripple documentation recently showed its payment infrastructure can interoperate with SWIFT messaging, demonstrating that blockchain innovation and traditional banking rails are not necessarily competing systems.
Instead, the future of cross-border payments could combine SWIFT's global connectivity with blockchain-powered real-time settlement to deliver faster, more efficient international transactions.