Bitcoin Daily: Ripple Tapped By CIMB For Southeast Asia DLT Tech; Bitcoin Cash’s Hard Fork Goes Live

Ripple

CIMB, a banking group that operates in countries such as Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand, has inked a deal with Ripple in order to bring the company’s blockchain technology to its SpeedSend remittance offering, Cryptovest reported. Through the offering, the bank hopes to take on the inefficient, sluggish and costly process for settlements with distributed ledger technology solutions in the ASEAN region. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in a press release, “we’re seeing banks and financial institutions from across the world lean into blockchain solutions because it enables a more transparent, quicker and lower cost payments experience.” He added that the group’s network already includes close to 800 branches and involves 15 countries.

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    In other news, the hard fork for the Bitcoin cash has gone live as the currency now has two different protocol implementations, according to Coindesk. SVPool reportedly mined the last “common block” – number 556,766. The two different implementations involve one by Bitcoin ABC and one called Bitcoin SV (the SV stands for “Satoshi’s Version.”) While the Bitcoin ABC version brings out upgrades, Bitcoin SV brings back code that was retired from the bitcoin protocol. According to the outlet, it’s not yet known if the protocols will “co-exist” or if one will be dominant in the future.

    And Microsoft is rolling out an Azure-powered kit for blockchain development on the cloud, TheNextWeb reported. The kit is said to include internet of things (IOT) device integration, mobile client support, and voice as well as short message service (SMS) interfaces. It will also reportedly work with more than one ledger technology, such as bitcoin and Ethereum. According to the outlet, Marc Mercuri, Microsoft blockchain engineering lead, said, “This kit extends the capabilities of our blockchain developer templates and Azure Blockchain Workbench, which incorporates Azure services for key management, off-chain identity and data, monitoring, and messaging APIs into a reference architecture that can be used to rapidly build blockchain-based applications.”


    Fifth Third: FinTech Platforms Drive Loan Growth Despite ‘Tepid’ Environment

    Fifth Third Bancorp saw its investments in tech-enabled products continue to pay off in the second quarter, Fifth Third Chairman, CEO and President Tim Spence said Thursday (July 17) during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

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      In commercial payments, the company’s investments in its Newline by Fifth Third embedded finance platform for enterprises led to 30% year-over-year revenue growth and an increase of more than $1 billion in commercial deposits connected to Newline services, Spence said.

      Fifth Third continued to see transactions migrate from legacy ACH to modern instant payment rails during the second quarter, Spence said.

      Rippling selected Newline to be their payments infrastructure provider, joining our existing roster of blue-chip FinTech customers,” Spence said.

      Fifth Third saw loan growth in its FinTech platforms, Provide and Dividend, Spence said.

      “In a quarter where uneven [commercial and industry (C&I)] loan demand and a soft housing market made loan growth tepid for the industry, our diversified loan origination platforms produced average loan growth of 5% over the prior year,” Spence said.

      The company’s loan growth reached its highest level in over two years during the quarter, according to a Thursday earnings release.

      Highlighting new additions to the bank’s digital services, Spence said Fifth Third partnered with digital estate planning platform Trust & Will to offer free wills to Fifth Third customers.

      When announcing this service in a May 19 press release, Fifth Third said it proactively addresses the concerns of a market in which 83% of Americans think a will is important, but only 31% have one in place.

      During the second half of the year, Fifth Third will begin to embed artificial intelligence-enabled functionality into its mobile app. Spence said during the call that this “should further improve the user experience and reduce volumes in higher-cost service channels.”

      From the second quarter of 2024 to the same quarter in 2025, Fifth Third saw its average active digital users increase from 3.07 million to 3.17 million and its average active mobile users rise from 2.32 million to 2.43 million, according to a presentation released Thursday in conjunction with the earnings call.

      The share of new consumer deposit accounts with digital originations rose from 22% to 28% over the past year, while the share of mortgage applications that were digitally assisted slipped from 98% to 97%, per the presentation.