Ripple Labs Named ‘Technology Pioneer’ by World Economic Forum

San Francisco based Ripple Labs, one of the world’s leading distributed ledger firms, won the award for its development of the innovative Ripple protocol, and its potential to change the antiquated world of bank-to-bank settlement. The award comes with access to some of the highest ranking government officials and business leaders in the world.

“We’re glad to see a distributed ledger company make it to the selection. Ripple Labs is part of a group of entrepreneurs who are more aware of the crucial challenges of the world around them, and who are determined to do their part to solve those challenges with their company.”
— – Fulvia Montresor, Head of Technology Pioneers at the World Economic Forum

According to a World Economic Forum blog post, the program is meant to recognize early stage companies from around the world that are designing and deploying new technologies that could have a huge social and economic effect on the world. Having a working prototype, innovating far beyond others, and outstanding leadership were also things considered.

Ripple Labs will now have access to one of the most influential and sought-after business and political networks in the world, and attend the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum to be held in Davos, Switzerland in January 2016.  The award will be officially presented to the distributed ledger company at the ninth Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China in September.

Other winners this year included, remittance startup TransferWise, secure communications platform Wickr, and a robotics agriculture firm Blue River Technology. A total of 49 companies in the information technology, energy, and health sector won awards this year.

Over the course of the program, the title of ‘Technology Pioneer’ has been awarded to more than 600 companies. Famous tech startups, such as Google, AirBnb, Kickstarter, SoundCloud, Twitter, Mozilla, and Dropbox, have been named winners in previous years.

The World Economic Forum discussed the digital currency Bitcoin at the organization’s meeting earlier this year in Davos, Switzerland, and came to the conclusion that though bitcoin the currency is flawed, the blockchain and distributed ledger technology behind it shows promise.

The Ripple Protocol has attracted attention from a range of interested parties. The company behind the open source protocol attracted two awards, the magazine MIT Technology Review recognized Ripple Labs as one of the years 50 Smartest Companies. The criteria for the recognition revolved around "whether a company had made strides in the past year that will define its field."

Ripple Labs was also named as a finalist for a PYMNTS Innovator Award during 2014, in two separate categories, Best New Technology and Most Disruptive Company. Earlier this year the company was named the world’s fourth “Most Innovative Company in Money” for 2015, by Fast Company, as part of its annual Most Innovative Companies Issue.

This newest accolade is further testament to Ripple Labs’ effort, bringing blockchain and distributed ledger technology to the established financial industry. Earlier this year, the fintech tech startup joined the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Task Force Steering Committee, to lead the United State’s efforts to upgrade the country’s financial infrastructure.

Ripple Labs’ Head of Research, Ryan Zagone, is now part of the 16 member committee which guides the central bank’s efforts to enable ‘real-time payments’ for American banks and financial institutions, and respect the various stakeholders in the discussion. The task force encompasses an even larger group of over 300 banking, government, payments, and other financial services professionals.

“I will continue Ripple Labs’ constructive approach in working with peers, bank partners, and the broader financial industry—including NACHA, IPFA, and the W3C.” said Zagone in an official statement. “Above all, I am committed to being an open and inclusive presence on the task force, representing the priorities and concerns of fellow non-bank service providers.”

The already well funded company also recently completed a $28 million Series A funding round, that included IDG Capital Partners and the venture arms of CME Group and global data storage company Seagate Technology.

Among all the success, media attention, and multi million dollar deals, FINCEN fined Ripple Labs $700,000 USD in May. The US Federal regulatory body that protects the U.S. financial system from being exploited by illicit activity stated that Ripple Labs "willfully violated several requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) by acting as a money services business (MSB) and selling its virtual currency, known as XRP, without registering with FinCEN, and by failing to implement and maintain an adequate anti-money laundering (AML) program designed to protect its products from use by money launderers or terrorist financiers."