Ripple, a San Francisco-based provider of financial settlement solutions, has announced new features that will bring transaction throughput to the same level as Visa and American Express.

The startup aims to move money the way information is moved today, creating the Internet of Value. The new features improve the Ripple Consensus Ledger (RCL) and Interledger Protocol (ILP), by bringing the Internet of Value (IOV) to life, Ripple said. These will enable ILP to communicate with RCL for meeting the needs of digital assets, traditional payments, and the traditional financial world, creating a network that can interconnect all the world’s value on ledgers.

According to Ripple Insights, the new features include Escrow and Payment Channels, which will increase the performance and scalability of RCL.

“Escrow allows RCL and ILP to communicate to secure XRP for an allotted amount of time or until certain conditions are met. This can be used to hold funds until a service is completed, or until a moment in time such as a birthday”, Ripple explained, adding that Escrow accomplishes this without the need to trust intermediaries and no single institution is in charge of holding the funds.

In order to solve the issue concerning slowing of transactions involving digital assets, Ripple built its own Payment Channel specifically designed for XRP – the digital asset native to RCL.

“An XRP Payment Channel allows transaction throughput to increase to tens of thousands of transactions per second, bringing our scalability to the same level as Visa. With the capability to send money as fast as a credit card swipe, XRP Payment Channels have the ability to transform the way people send money and the payments industry as a whole”, it added.

The new features are now active and will allow companies to adopt RCL and ILP. Those using the technology will receive the benefits of XRP, providing them with a faster, cheaper experience for cross-border payments. Ripple said that with the implementation of the new features, ILP and RCL will provide the necessary infrastructure for enabling the IOV.