American Express and Santander To Use RippleNet to Ease US-UK Cross Border Transactions 10

American Express and Santander To Use RippleNet to Ease US-UK Cross Border Transactions

With the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hash wars stealing the show in the crypto-verse for the last one week, we might have missed out on an important development in terms of blockchain technology being used to ease cross-border transactions. American Express, Santander and Ripple have teamed up to speed up cross-border payments in the US-UK financial corridor.

Many of us are aware that Santander has been using Ripple’s xCurrent to power its One Pay FX payment platform that allows its retail customers in Spain, UK, Brazil and Poland to make instant cross-border payments. In the case of American Express, the credit card services giant confirmed it was using xCurrent during the Money 20/20 event in Amsterdam earlier on in the year.

New Service to be Powered By RippleNet

It is therefore only natural that the two firms would use Ripple’s blockchain network of RippleNet, to ease payments between the US and the United Kingdom. Initially, the service will allow for payments by American Express’ business customers on its FX International Payments (FXIP) to be routed via RippleNet to make instant traceable cross-border payments to U.K Santander bank accounts.

Marc Gordon, Executive VP and Chief Information Officer at American Express, had this to say about the new service:

This collaboration with Ripple and Santander represents the next step forward on our blockchain journey, evolving the way we move money around the world.

 Santander’s Head of Global Transaction Banking, Jose Luis Calderon, added the following:

This blockchain solution opens up a new channel between the U.S. and the U.K. and presents significant opportunity for payments globally.

Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse was also optimistic about the new collaboration:

We’re taking a huge step forward with American Express and Santander in solving the problems corporate customers experience with global payments. Transfers that used to take days will be completed in real-time, allowing money to move as fast as business today.

XRP To Come Into Play Later

Marcus Treacher, Global Head of Strategic accounts at Ripple, stated the following in an interview with CNBC about the use of XRP in the future.

The XRP currency will come into play later on in the evolutionary dynamics and the other players.

The technology we have developed, it separated a connection from the cryptocurrency or the token. So what that means is that a bank or non-bank like AMEX can use Ripple to connect and just exchange value from one fiat currency to another directly, without the need for any intermediate blockchain currency.

What are your thoughts on the new partnership between American Express, Santander and Ripple? Please let us know in the comment section below.