American Express: Ripple Powers Cross-Border Transactions 'In a Matter of Seconds'

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American Express is revealing the results of a pilot test of Ripple’s xCurrent solution for cross-border payments.

At the Wings of Change Europe conference in Madrid, Amex general manager of corporate payments Carlos Carriedo said Ripple’s technology has the potential to dramatically improve the sluggish status quo of international payments.

“We did a pilot. We did a test, partnering with Santander locally, and with Ripple to just do cross-border transactions.

Cross-border transactions continue to be complex and slow. And in a matter of seconds, through this test, our clients were able to transfer funds in a very transparent and seamless way, from one part of the world, to the other one.”

According to Carriedo, American Express sees a lot of potential in blockchain technology as a whole, and continues to invest in the technology.

“Blockchain is absolutely an option we’re looking at. Just to give you a sense, we have invested in a fintech lab based on blockchain technology, just to understand how to leverage this better…

So more to come. There’s still a lot of things that need to get addressed with blockchain as a technology. But it’s very promising.”

Back in November of 2017, American Express and Santander announced a partnership with Ripple to increase the speed of non-card transactions between the US and UK. Both Amex and Santander say they’re open to expanding the partnership worldwide, based on the results.