antander has been one of the biggest believers in Ripple’s network and has been trialing Ripple’s cross-border transfer system for over two years now. The progress has been fruitful and Santander now processes half its cross-border transactions via Ripple’s network, the banking group’s head has revealed.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Santander’s executive chairman Ana Botin shared on the transformational partnership between the two companies that is changing the lives of many of its clients. Santander’s payment app, OnePayFX is the first retail blockchain-based money transfer service and Ana backs it to compete with the current dominant fintech companies such as TransferWise.
The service is available for Santander’s clients in Spain, UK, Poland and Brazil with the bank working to avail the service in more countries by the end of the year. Using the app, one can make same day payments to any Euro account for UK and Spanish clients and in the case of Brazil and Poland, the funds are availed the next day. Santander is working to make the process even faster and according to Ana, the payments will be instant before the end of year. The app also calculates for you how much money one will receive in Euros, accounting for any foreign exchange charges. For Santander UK clients, the service is completely free.
The biggest bank in Spain, Santander now processes over 50% of all its foreign exchanges via Ripple’s platform. Having tested the platform for over two years, Ana described Ripple as fully compliant and completely safe. The bank is working to bring in other countries, with Portugal being the immediate target. It’s also working to avail the service to enterprises as it’s only available for individual clients only. In the near future, OnePayFX will be offered as a standalone app that will be made available for open market payments, a direct competitor with TranferWise with Ana describing their Ripple-based system as much better than anything being offered on the market.
A few weeks ago, Citibank Group released a report that among other things stated that European banks will lose a third of their revenues to fintech startups in the next five years. With this in mind, Santander looks set to fight for its market position and with Ripple’s extremely fast and affordable platform, it could end up as the last bank standing in Europe.
