XRP Ripple: XRP had a rollercoaster ride on Thursday on the news that American Express has teamed up with Ripple for cross-border payments.

This partnership with Ripple will enable instant blockchain-based payments for U.S. corporate customers sending funds to U.K.-based businesses that bank with Santander U.K.

How did XRP Ripple React?

XRP surged to the one-month high level of $0.2668 as the Ripple-AMEX partnership news broke out. However, it quickly erased most of the gains and closed Thursday’s trading session at the key pivot level of 0.2233. It then started Friday’s Asian session below the Ichimoku cloud. The future cloud on Ichimoku Kinko Hyo’s daily setup remains flat, although slightly bearish.

With this, we could expect XRP’s range trade to continue for a bit more longer against the US dollar. The median range price for the pair appears to be between the 23% and 61% Fibonacci retracement levels at 0.1890 and 0.2790 respectively.

The Fibonacci setup retraces the major downtrend XRP saw after its ICO price of 0.3729, all the way down to the all-time-low price of 0.13.

Tell Me More about the Ripple-AMEX Collaboration

The Ripple-AMEX blockchain project allows payments made by American Express’ business customers on its  FX International Payments (FXIP) platform to be routed through Ripple’s enterprise blockchain network.

With this, Ripple believes that its cryptocurrency, XRP, will “come into play” as a means of speeding up payments later on down the line. This could explain the initial surge as the news broke out.

This marks one of the first major uses of the blockchain industry. Financial firms hope the technology can reduce the cost and complexity of processes such as securities settlement and international payments.

In a statement Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that transfers that used to take days “will be completed in real time.”

American Express’s chief information officer Marc Gordon said in a statement that American Express has “a long history of integrating new technologies,”  and that this collaboration with Ripple and Santander “represents the next step forward on our blockchain journey, evolving the way we move money around the world.”

Should this channel prove successful and expand, it could lead a shift in the industry towards further blockchain development.