Sending money isn’t as easy as sending an email, especially when it’s dealing with foreign banks — at least not yet. Two U.S. banks, New Jersey-based Cross River Bank and Kansas-based CBW Bank, are set to announce their use of the Ripple currency protocol, which would allow instant and free cross-border payments on the network.

“It’s a big milestone,” said Ripple Labs CEO, Chris Larsen. “We’ve been working on our enterprise banking strategy for well over a year. It takes awhile for banks to get going.”

The Ripple Transaction Protocol (RTXP) is an internet protocol like HTTP or SMTP (which is what powers email) that allows a transfer of value across a distributed network. No one “owns” the World Wide Web or e-mail, and likewise, Ripple is an open-sourced protocol with no owner or operator. Because email is based on the SMTP protocol, you can send messages freely regardless of…