According to reports, a blockchain-based app for cross-border foreign exchange will be launched this week (precisely on Friday) by a worldwide banking giant – Santander Group. On Thursday, the Financial Times said that the application, dubbed One Pay FX, was initially meant to be released for only the customers of the global banking giant (Santander Group) and only in four countries – Brazil, United Kingdom, Poland, and Spain.
The company said it has plans to introduce the service for small and medium businesses in other countries in a couple of months. They also said that they would make the product available to other financial institutes across the globe.
The application is built on the distributed ledger tech, which is offered by a blockchain startup Ripple that is based in San Francisco. The application is coming to light after twenty-four months of development, and the launch of this application makes Santander Group one of the first banks to offer their customers foreign exchange payments that are based on blockchain technology.
CoinDesk reported that the UK arm of the banking group based in Spain started the process of development of the app in 2016 with Ripple. During that period, the banking group was testing the app with its employees in the United Kingdom.
The product is a success because of the continuing partnership between Santander and Ripple, which invested a lot of money in the product. Santander has also said in a presentation that the application is based on the xCurrent platform of Ripple (a distributed network that is created to instantly execute cross-border transactions). xCurrent doesn’t use XRP – the cryptocurrency gotten from the blockchain protocol of Ripple.
According to report, transactions of foreign exchange covered by the application in the four designated countries could account for almost 50 percent of the retail customers of Santander.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://smartereum.com/9016/ripple-payment-application-to-be-launched-this-weekend-by-santander/