According to reports, the global banking giant, Grupo Santander, will soon launch a blockchain-based application for the cross-border exchange of currencies.
According to a Financial Times report, the application, called One Pay FX, will initially be launched for Santander's clients in four countries: Spain, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Poland.
The group said it hopes to introduce the service in additional countries for small businesses in the coming months, and may also extend product availability to other financial institutions.
Based on the distributed accounting technology provided by the blockchain start-up based in San Francisco, Ripple, the application is launched after two years in development and marks Santander as one of the first banks to offer foreign currency payments through blockchain for consumers.
As reported by CoinDesk, the US arm of the banking group based in Spain started the development process together with Ripple in 2016. At that time, the bank was testing the application among its staff in the United Kingdom.
The product also arises as a result of a continuous partnership between Ripple and Santander, which through its venture capital arm InnoVentures previously invested 4 million dollars in the series A funds of Ripple 32 million in 2015.
The Santander Group has also previously indicated in a presentation that the application is based on the xCurrent platform of Ripple, a distributed network designed for instant cross-border transactions. xNatural does not use XRP, the native cryptocurrency derived from the Ripple blockchain protocol.
According to the FT report, the foreign exchange transactions of the four countries initially covered by the application could represent almost half of Santander's retail consumer volume.
Source: CoinDesk
