Charles H. Miller
Spain’s Santander Group announced a new, Ripple-powered app that will enable seamless money transfers between 4 countries, with potential to eventually expand it to other markets where it operates.
The app has been tested among the bank’s employees for the previous 18 month, integrating Apple Pay for payments between £10 and £10,000 ($14 and $14,000), and is now reportedly ready to be rolled-out to customers in select markets. These markets include Spain, Brazil, the U.K. and Poland, where the bank’s customers will be able to conduct cross-border payments in under a minute. Additionally, the app will also provide a digital wallet, and a personal finance manager capabilities.
It is, however, unclear when exactly Santander’s app will launch; all we have is “in the next few months,” though Ripple’s chief executive Brad Garlinghouse said it will be released this quarter.
Also, we know the app will use Ripple’s xCurrent product that does not use XRP, the company’s native cryptocurrency.
Santander has already worked with Ripple
Together with American Express, the Spanish bank has established a Ripple-powered “payments corridor” using Ripple to enable money transfers from England to the U.S. in just a few seconds.
Said corridor relies on Ripple’s blockchain, RippleNet, to connect Amex customers using U.S. dollars to Santander bank accounts in the UK using British pounds. The integration routes non-card payments through the shared payment network for nearly instant, auditable cross-border payments.
Even before that, Ripple has connected Europe and the U.S. via its work with Swedish bank SEB. That partnership produced a corridor between Stockholm and New York City which, just like Santander’s upcoming app, doesn’t include the XRP cryptocurrency. It is, what Treacher calls, “a direct connection” with no intermediary cryptocurrency.
Elsewhere, Ripple has gained traction thanks to, in part, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington’s $100 million XRP fund, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s software to enable payments and digital wallet services for the underbanked.
