Spanish banking giant Santander is going to launch an international money transfer app in the next few months thanks to a partnership with fintech startup Ripple, according to Business Insider. The app will reportedly rely solely on Ripple’s xCurrent and RippleNet.
Speaking at the International Fintech conference in London, the bank’s UK CEO, Nathan Bostock said:
“This spring, if not one [sic] beats us to it, we will be the first large retail bank to carry out cross-border payments at scale with blockchain technology.”
Bostock didn’t reveal when the blockchain-based app would be launched, and a Santander spokesperson refused to comment the development when contacted. Back in January, Santander CEO Ana Botin revealed the payments app was coming in the group’s 2017 results presentation.
It will be available in Spain, Brazil, Poland, and in the UK. At the time she revealed it’s set to integrate Apply Pay for payments between £10 and £10,000 ($14 and $14,000). The app’s goal will be to enable same-day international payments in about 40 seconds. It’s set to provide users with a digital wallet and a personal finance manager, while facilitating peer-to-peer payments.
Santander
Santander has notably invested in Ripple in 2015, and again in 2016. Reports claiming the bank has been trailing Ripple’s technology for an international payments app with its staff have been around since 2016.
The payment app’s users are set to not only see their international payments get settled in under 24 hours, they’ll also find out up front how much a transfer will cost them. Traditionally, international transfers use various meddle men who take their cut, meaning the final sum is almost always less than what was sent.
This year Ripple has been securing several partnerships. It partnered with MoneyGram to speed up fiat currency settlements, and with a consortium of 61 Japanese banks to create an instant payments app. The fintech startup further partnered with a South Korean bank for “commercial” cross-border remittances.
Ripple’s XRP token is, at press time, trading at $0.64, as it is up 1.86 percent in the last 24-hour period. XRP is currently the world’s third largest cryptocurrency by market cap, with a total value of $24.5 billion.
