Banking Giant Santander to Bring Ripple-Powered App to Latin America

After launching its app for international payments, One Pay FX, which uses Ripple’s xCurrent solution, Spanish multinational banking giant Santander Group is expanding this service to other countries.

The company is reportedly working on several things at the moment, which would make international transactions faster, easier, and cheaper than what the legacy banking systems offer, Coindesk reported, citing Cedric Menager, CEO of One Pay FX. The bank is:

• building a “payment corridor” for their customers in Latin America, which would be rolled out country by county and would enable sending money to the U.S. instantly and for free through their One Pay FX app. For now, this option is available only to Spain and the UK.
• planning to roll out One Pay FX in the U.S. sometimes in the future, for users to send money abroad.
• developing Pago FX, an xCurrent international payment product for non-Santander customers.

“Customers who were not doing international transfers are now using the service, customers who were using international transfer are now doing it more, and customers who had gone to use fintech competition have come back because of the One Pay offering,” the CEO was quoted as saying. He did not provide any specific numbers.

Currently, Santander UK’s website states that customers can make international payments using online or telephone banking, by visiting a branch, or by using Santander’s One Pay FX app (only for iPhones running iOS10+). One Pay FX, a mobile application for international payments powered by blockchain technology, has been launched in April last year. It has been so far available to retail customers in Spain, the UK, Brazil, and Poland, however the company planned to roll out the app in other countries from the very beginning, with each country offering different payment options depending on the market.

The app uses xCurrent, a solution that aims to facilitate the instantaneous settlement and end-to-end tracking of cross-border payments among users. InnoVentures, Santander’s fintech venture capital fund, also made an investment in Ripple in 2015, according to the bank’s website.