- Ripple-powered payments solution OnePay FX to go Europe-wide
- Beta-testing revealed blockchain tech delivered simple, instant payment settlements
- Ripple continues its partnerships with traditional banks
Banco Santander has confirmed that it will expand its Ripple(XRP)-powered OnePay FC international money transfer service to other European countries.
The Ripple ledger will also be used by the bank for all its payment settlements henceforth.
Addressing participants at the recent Ripple “Swell” event, Banco Santander’s Head of Innovation, Ed Metzger, said, “We believe that financial services is moving to a world of open platforms where companies collaborate to deliver excellent customer service for their customers, and that’s at the core of what we’re doing with OnePay FX.”
The strategic partnership between the bank and Ripple was unveiled in March this year, although at that point there were no public revelations about the specifics of the collaboration between the two companies. What we know now, courtesy of an official statement from the Ripple team, is that Santander began testing RippleNet along with other liquidity products on its blockchain network as soon as the deal was inked.
For its, part, as reflected in Metzger’s comment, Santander saw first hand the greater transparency, certainty and speed that blockchain-based solutions enabled – features that the traditional financial sector and not previously seen.
During his Swell talk, Metzger went on to explain that the principal reason the bank had integrated XRP and RippleNet into the infrastructure of OnePay FX was that they made money transfer online transactions so effortless for people wanting to send money abroad or make other kinds of cross border payments. International Banco Santander customers can no send and receive money across borders swiftly and conveniently, he said.
To illustrate the new efficacity of the blockchain-enabled platform, Metzger cited the example of an Italian Santander customer who parked his car in the wrong place while on vacation. He didn’t have his banking card on him but needed to pay a fine, pronto. Thanks to the Ripple-powered OnePay FX app, he was able to settle the fine instantly and prevent his car from being towed away. A money transfer like that in the past would have taken “an awful, awful long time,” Metz observed.
At present, Banco Santander’s Ripple-powered OnePay FC solution has been confined to Spain, the UK, Poland and Brazil. During the beta phase, the blockchain tech amply demonstrated to the bank (and its customers) that it could enable instantaneous money transfers and appreciably simplify the international payments process.
Metzger believes the integration could well pave the way to hugely increased uptake of XRP in places like Japan, where the digital currency is rapidly emerging as the most popular crypto.
Ripple has been making serious inroads into encouraging the adoption of its offerings within the traditional finance arena, building numerous partnerships with banks and other financial institutions across the globe. While this is bearing fruit in terms of increased adoption of the technology, many crypto watchers believe Ripple should also be promoting the use pf its XRP currency in tandem with its Ripple Ledger.
Among stakeholders, the emerging consensus is that Ripple is implementing a proactive approach to its vigorous expansion and adoption drive. In doing so, Metzger says, it’s successfully avoided the “peanut butter problem” of spreading itself too thin by chasing too many adoption avenues.
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