Bitcoins are circulated through a process calling mining. When people transact on Bitcoin, the unconfirmed transactions are grouped together into a block. For the block to be added to the permanent ledger, a computational puzzle should be solved. Miners compete to solve this puzzle, and the first one to solve this puzzle is rewarded with bitcoins minted out of thin air. This process is called mining. 

Ripple doesn't have the process of mining. Ripple has already created 100 billion XRP. No more XRP coins would be issues. Though mining was an innovation, it adds to the computational cost. The energy requirement is high and it would take a long time for the blocks to be added to the ledger and hence the payments would be delayed. 

Ripple confirms transaction using selected validators. This decreases the energy requirement and significantly reduces speed. Hence, transactions on Ripple would take only 4-6 seconds to confirm. Bitcoin transactions take around 15-25 minutes to confirm.