Spanish banking giant Santander says it will soon expand its use of Ripple’s cross-border payments platform.
In a recent conference held by the Institute of International and European Affairs, managing director of digital investment banking at Santander, John Whelan, talked about the company’s efforts in blockchain.
He says the company will bring its Ripple-powered payments platform called One Pay FX to all 10 of its main corridors in the near future.
“We actually have a blockchain-based international payments system that’s running on four of our corridors: Brazil, Mexico, UK, Spain. It’ll be on all 10 soon. Instant transfers at very, very tight spreads: 30 basis points.
It’s a nice user experience. I use it myself. I sent money to the United States. It’s available same-day. Fantastic, and at a guaranteed rate.”
In April of this year, Santander executive chair Ana Botín said One Pay FX is now powering more than half of Santander Group’s FX payments.
“With this new initiative that is already in place, we’re actually covering 50% of all the FX payments that the Santander Group does annually.
And it works really well, because the rails that we’re using – which, as you say, we’ve collaborated with Ripple – we’ve been testing those for two years, actually with our own employees. And it works.
It’s safe. It’s fully compliant, and obviously we’ve made sure we comply with all local regulations. So you’re in safe hands.”
One Pay FX launched in October of 2018.
It utilizes Ripple’s primary cross-border payment messaging system, which is designed to be a faster alternative to Swift. One Pay FX does not utilize On-Demand Liquidity, which is powered by XRP.
Santander’s support desk set off a whirlwind of rumors back in March, when it mistakenly stated that it was using XRP.
Santander then retracted the statement and clarified it only uses Ripple’s xCurrent, which does not utilize the digital asset.