The banks of the Santander Group will offer a Ripple-based service in Latin America.
It is called One Pay FX, a mobile app that uses Ripple’s xCurrent platform and opens a so-called “payment corridor” allowing Latin American customers to send money to the United States quickly and free of charge.
One Pay FX is currently only available to customers in the UK and Spain, but the service will also be extended to a certain number of Latin American countries. The Santander Group is currently present in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile and Mexico.
In addition, the Santander Group has stated that it will also provide the service to US customers, although it has not disclosed the timeframe due to the fact that US regulations are a far from easy obstacle to overcome.
The service is an alternative to the traditional SWIFT system but instantaneous, online, without commission and with the possibility for users to see the exchange rates before sending the money.
According to Santander, One Pay FX volumes tripled in the first six months of 2019 and Spain’s volumes in April had increased 120% in the last 12 months.
However, the service does not use XRP, Ripple’s cryptocurrency, which is used in xRapid but not in xCurrent.
One Pay FX CEO Cedric Menager 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”.
[…] 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. International payments is a way for us to acquire customers having a painful experience with traditional banking”.
