It is worth differentiating between XRP and Ripple because the two entities are not the same, and often people wrongly use these terms interchangeably. Ripple is the fintech company that is developing a payment settlement system called RippleNet, while XRP is a cryptocurrency native to the XRP Ledger blockchain. Ripple does make use of XRP within the RippleNet, but the cryptocurrency is not essential to the functioning of the company.