Ripple is an innovative banking system.  As such, even if it were perfect technically, it is completely unknown how such an inclusive system will turn out to work AS A BANKING SYSTEM, with all the risks thereto pertaining.  Kudos to the creators for letting us find out.

If I ran a bank, I would not welcome competition that put pressure on prices for money transfers and currency exchanges.  However, those are pretty small revenue sources for banks.  Won't they just match the low price?

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a technical solution to a problem that it turned out is susceptible in its totality to such a solution, namely, digital cash.