Santander Eye’s Expansion After Volume Triples Using Ripple Tech…
Banking giant Santander has been successfully using Ripple tech since April 2018. One Pay FX allows international payments in near real-time currently for customers in the UK, Spain, Poland and Brazil.
The Blockchain technology underpinning the app is provided by Ripple, a company which Santander
Innoventures has also invested in. Working with Ripple builds on Santander’s philosophy of collaborating
with the most innovative companies to consistently provide better services to customers.Santander
Innoventures, Santander’s $200 million fintech fund invested in Ripple back in 2015. Now they want to expand the free payments system to include many more Latin American countries making payments to the United States.
Paving the Future
Between January and June this Santander say One Pay FX payment volume tripled. With usage in Spain surging by 120% over the past year.
As always the banking giants and Ripple remain tight-lipped as to when this expansion will be rolled out. They are also refusing to comment on which countries they are targetting specifically.
BUT they did reveal that they wish to open up a free payment corridor in the USA. This will allow nearly 400 million US citizens the ability to send money abroad using the Ripple tech.
Ripple is redefining the way that value moves around the world, and today we’re already enabling real-time, affordable international settlement between banks who have adopted our solutions.
Chris Larson Ripple
Not only do they wish to expand Pay FX. Santander announced plans to launch digital payments platform Pago FX.
The app will also use Ripple technology to give non-Santander customers the option to make international payments.
Its only a matter of time
xCurrent or xRapid
Currently, Santander is using xCurrent which does not need or use XRP. Future plans also make no mention of the switch to xRapid which uses XRP to settle international payments.
Instead, xCurrent requires the use of Nostro Vostro accounts. These accounts pre-fund payments and are the current system in use by banks making international payments, particularly to each other.
Why Change
As legend Brad Garlinghouse has pointed out many times it is far cheaper to utilize the use of XRP as the bridge between Fiat currencies such as the dollar.
Commercial banks around the world hold accounts with correspondent banks overseas to implement cross-border wire transfers, usually over the SWIFT network. The Nostro/Vostro account mechanism creates delays and inefficiencies in the system.
Ripple Tech
This prevents the volatility associated with Fiat and prevents the need for these pre-funded Nostro Vostro accounts. At any given time this can mean literally billions of dollars are sitting doing nothing, waiting to pre-fund payments.
Money that could be better used elsewhere or added to liquidity. Basically, it is pure common sense for such banks to utilize the XRP payment token via xRapid.
That day is coming and it won’t be too long looking at how quickly Pay FX has exploded in use.