Share this article
Santander to Launch Ripple Payment App This Week
Banking giant Santander Group is reportedly launching a blockchain-based application for cross-border foreign exchange on Friday.
By Wolfie Zhao
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 7:49 a.m. Published Apr 12, 2018, 11:10 a.m.
Make us preferred on Google
Global banking giant Santander Group is reportedly launching a blockchain-based application for cross-border foreign exchange on Friday.
According to a report by the Financial Times on Thursday, the app, dubbed One Pay FX, is initially to be rolled out for Santander's customers in four countries – Spain, the U.K., Brazil and Poland.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
The group said it expects to introduce the service in additional countries for small businesses in the coming months, and may also extend availability of the product to other financial institutions.
Built on distributed ledger technology provided by San Fransisco-based blockchain startup Ripple, the app is launching after two years in development and marks Santander as one of the first banks to offer blockchain-based foreign exchange payments for consumers.
As reported by CoinDesk, the U.K. arm of the Spain-based banking group kicked off the development process in conjunction with Ripple in 2016. At the time, the bank was trialing the application among its staff in the U.K.
The product also comes as a result of a continuing partnership between Ripple and Santander, which, through its venture capital arm InnoVentures previously invested $4 million in Ripple's $32 million series A funding in 2015.
Santander Group has also previously indicated in a presentation that the app is based on Ripple's xCurrent platform, a distributed network designed for instant cross-border transactions. xCurrent does not utlilize XRP, the native cryptocurrency derived from Ripple's blockchain protocol.
According to the FT report, foreign exchange transactions from the four countries initially covered by the app could account for nearly half of the volume of Santander's retail consumers.
Santander image via Shutterstock
More For You
Pudgy Penguins is building a multi-vertical consumer IP platform — combining phygital products, games, NFTs and PENGU to monetize culture at scale.
What to know:
Pudgy Penguins is emerging as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, shifting from speculative “digital luxury goods” into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its strategy is to acquire users through mainstream channels first; toys, retail partnerships and viral media, then onboard them into Web3 through games, NFTs and the PENGU token.
The ecosystem now spans phygital products (> $13M retail sales and >1M units sold), games and experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500k downloads in two weeks), and a widely distributed token (airdropped to 6M+ wallets). While the market is currently pricing Pudgy at a premium relative to traditional IP peers, sustained success depends on execution across retail expansion, gaming adoption and deeper token utility.
More For You
Weaker dollar fails to spur bitcoin gains, but there's a reason for that, JPMorgan says
Gold and other hard assets are rallying on dollar weakness, but bitcoin is lagging as markets continue to treat it as a liquidity-sensitive risk asset.
What to know:
- Bitcoin has, unusually, not rallied alongside the slide in the U.S. dollar.
- JPMorgan strategists say the dollar’s weakness is being driven by short-term flows and sentiment, not changes in growth or monetary policy expectations, and they expect the currency to stabilize as the U.S. economy strengthens.
- Because markets do not view the current dollar decline as a lasting macro shift, bitcoin is trading more like a liquidity-sensitive risk asset than a reliable dollar hedge, leaving gold and emerging markets as the preferred beneficiaries of dollar diversification.
Top Stories
