European money transfer service Azimo is teaming up with Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) to power a real-time remittance service utilizing Ripple’s payments technology.
According to a press release from Ripple, the partnership will reduce the typical average time for payments from Europe to Thailand from one business day to less than a minute.
Azimo co-founder and executive chairman Michael Kent says the partnership is part of a larger transformation happening in the cross-border payments industry.
“More and more countries are going to instant payment. Thailand recently launched their instant payment network, and this partnership with the largest bank in the country allows us to get the time to settle payments down from around 24 hours to an average of 22 seconds. [It’s] faster to send money to Thailand than to someone else in Europe.”
Azimo first partnered with Ripple in February and says it plans to use XRP to power cross-border payments. However, the partnership between Azimo and Siam Commercial Bank does not appear to utilize the digital asset.
Siam Commercial Bank began collaborating with Ripple in 2018 and is using its technology to power its cross-border payments app called SCB Easy. SCB has not committed to using XRP for payments, and instead uses Ripple’s payment messaging system, which is designed to be a more efficient alternative to Swift.