The Santander Group plans to establish a new payments corridor in Latin America allowing countries to make instant payments to the U.S. using Ripple’s xCurrent payment solution.
Although XRP has been a poor performer so far in 2019, Ripple‘s blockchain-based money transfer and remittance solutions continue to make progress. Santander Group, the Spanish banking giant, recently said that it plans to expand its Ripple-powered remittance services to Latin America.
Speaking to CoinDesk, Santander said that it wants to create a “payment corridor” allowing its customers in Latin America to instantly send money to the U.S. Santander will provide this facility using Ripple One Pay FX solution that uses Ripple’s xCurrent software.
At present, only Spainish and British customers can send money to the U.S. using the One Pay FX solution. Santander hasn’t revealed explicitly how many Latin American countries would join. However, the “payment corridor” would include countries like Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico.
Santander Incorporating Ripple Solutions
The ties between Santander Group and Ripple date back to last year when the banking giant introduced the One Pay FX to four countries namely Poland, the U.K, Spain, and Brazil. These four countries contribute to more than half of the bank’s profits.
Speaking to CoinDesk, Cedric Menager, CEO of One Pay FX, said:
“Customers who were not doing international transfers are now using the service, customers who were using international transfer are now doing it more, and customers who had gone to use fintech competition have come back because of the One Pay offering.”
Ripple’s xCurrent solution holds leverage over the traditional SWIFT banking solutions when it comes to instant international transfers. Besides, the xCurrent solution has a negligible fee and provides a view into the currency exchange rates before sending the money.
Note that Ripple’s xCurrent solution uses the company’s blockchain network to facilitate transactions, but it doesn’t involve the use of its native cryptocurrency XRP.
Registering Massive Growth Using One Pay FX
Santander has witnessed massive growth by using the One Pay FX solution. The banking giant said that its volumes have tripled in six months between January 2019 and June 2019. On the other hand, the bank’s volumes for Spain have surged by 120 percent year-over-year in April 2019.
Speaking about the Latin America expansion, Menager said:
“The international payment experience in the Latin American markets is even less evolved than in the European markets. There are even parts of the Latin American market where it’s almost impossible to do an online international payment.”
The “payments corridor” launch will take place country-by-country. The bank has yet to announce the first Latin American country where they would start the process.
Besides, the Santander Group is also working on another solution dubbed Pago FX. This will be xCurrent-based payments product for international payments for non-Santander customers. “International payments is a way for us to acquire customers having a painful experience with traditional banking,” noted Menager.
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