By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 24th, 2024
Spanish banking giant Santander is planning a massive expansion of its international payment platform One Pay FX app, which currently operates in 19 countries, including the US.
According to the latest news, a Ripple-based international payment platform One Pay FX app, backed by the leading Spanish banking institution Santander, will soon undergo a massive expansion. The system represents itself a global payments application that facilitates international payments. It was officially launched last year, in 2018, and currently allows for financial transactions in 19 countries, including the United States.
As it was officially announced last week on the occasion of Santander’s Investor Day gathering in London, the Spanish banking giant is going to launch the platform’s new standalone version called Pago FX.
The main advantage of this new independent platform is that anyone will be able to use it, even those, who are not Santander customers. It will let even the unbanked people conduct money transactions across the globe instantly and safely.
As per the company, the new application is designed for SMEs to facilitate smooth payments. It is planned to be launched in the near future in Poland, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
According to Ana Botín, an Executive chair on Santander, who commented on the company’s application One Pay FX, powered by Ripple’s payment platform xCurrent, in January:
“You can do FX transfers, real-time, between the UK and continental Europe. And you can actually do Poland, Brazil and Chile – through Santander – for the same cost as Transferwise… And that is the reason why we need to really think about what is real reciprocity. The devil is in the details and the timing.”
One Pay FX currently powers over half of all Santander’s FX payments, and according to Ana Botín it does work really well:
“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.”
Last month, the company’s UK-based help desk had mistakenly stated that its One Pay FX utilizes XRP to improve international payments. Later, responding to an XRP enthusiast, the company apologized for providing incorrect information. It turned out Santander UK confused Ripple with XRP and, in reality, is using Ripple’s xCurrent for international payments in various European countries along with the US through its app One Pay FX.