Bloomberg reports that Latin America's biggest bank by market value is among five new customers joining Ripple's international money-transfer network

Brazil's Itau Unibanco is among those latest five that is said to plan to use RippleNet - the blockchain service associated with Ripple. The other four customers are India's IndusInd Bank, Brazil's Beetech, Singapore's InstaReM, and Canada's Zip Remit.

While RippleNet doesn't use XRP - Ripple's digital token, Ripple has been focusing more towards RippleNet and developing market XRP-based products for future use (as well as the blockchain technology) as it seeks to tap into financial institutions.

The idea here is to free financial institutions from the expense and hassle of tying up money in different currencies in other financial institutions, one that Ripple says that XRP is able to do as it serves as a bridge currency for those sort of transactions.

But financial institutions have been reluctant to adopt the usage of XRP, which has led to Ripple erring more towards RippleNet's services - which is competing with SWIFT.

As Bitcoin rebounds from recent lows, Ripple hasn't really staged a comeback as remarkable. Current XRP price is sitting at $1, and Ripple's market capitalisation has fallen to less than half of Ethereum's at the moment (according to CoinMarketCap) - having once surpassed the $100 billion mark in early January.