The CEO of Santander’s subsidiary in UK, Nathan Bostock has remarked during the International Fintech Conference in London held on 23rd March 2018 that “This spring, if not [sic] one beats us to it, we will be the first large retail bank to carry out cross-border payments at scale with blockchain technology”.
The first announcement was made by Santander’s CEO Ana Botin during a presentation organized in January 2018. According to her, the new application can be used by customers based in Spain, Brazil, UK and Poland.
Santander and Ripple’s partnership
Santander is not at its first involvement in operations including crypto coin Ripple. Spain-based bank first invested in 2015 through its own Santander Innoventures platform. Their decision was based on the prediction that the blockchain technology and digital coins will soon be adopted by several international banks. Since 2015, Santander has had some collaborations with the Ripple company, including the agreement signed in November 2017.
The Ripple’s app is going to improve the money transfer system
The Ripple platform will sell a blockchain- based payment application projected to be accessed by institutions. Today, the money transfer abroad method takes a few days, while the new network can improve this up to 24 hours.
One of the highly acclaimed Ripple platform’s services is xCurrent. It “enables banks to instantly settle cross-border payments with end-to-end tracking”. Another one is called xRapid, which utilizes Ripple’s own cryptocurrency XRP in order to make the app work.
Ripple is being recognized as the “Western Union using blockchain technology”. It’s the first cryptocurrency to be accepted by a bank in 2014, growing rapidly and signing hundreds of agreements with institutions around the world.
Ripple has proudly announced about the testing period of its application in China. The platform’s head of government and regulatory relations, Sagar Sarbhai stated that “We’re trying to get some regulatory clarity, we’ve started engaging informally with banks, FIs and payment providers, speaking to regulators and government bodies, trying to educate on what Ripple is and what our vision is.”
Today, 26th March 2018, Ripple has a market capitalization of 24,756,419,437 USD, according to CoinMarketCap.