Not too long ago, Banco Santander’s UK branch has released new publicity in which it boasts about its strategic alliance with Ripple. The picture says that international transfers are now done over blockchain technology (from 10 to 10,000 pounds) and that it connects to Apple Pay and uses Touch ID. It also explains that time and cost are “drastically reduced” and that new types of transactions around the globe are enabled through Ripple. This is huge.
Banco Santander is not a Wall Street or a Swiss bank. It’s Spanish, so it’s not considered to be among the classic clique of the world’s banks. That being said, it’s huge. It has a presence all over the world, and it’s considered to be the best bank on the planet as of now. That’s just context.
More important is that Santander is using Ripple’s technology in production. Many banks (more than a hundred) around the world have announced an intention to use Ripple’s blockchain and software to process their international payments, but they are not committed.
They’re adopting the technology in tests in order to find out if it really suits them, and can be easily integrated into their current services. Not so with Santander. Santander is in the Ripple wagon 100% and it’s already experiencing the benefits.
Santander & Ripple… “it connects to Apple Pay and uses Touch ID”
Thx @XRP_VETERAN pic.twitter.com/FAuO160Ids
— XRP_Canada ✌🏽 (@XRP_Canada) November 22, 2018
For crypto enthusiasts (especially Ripple fans) this is very significative news. Every transaction performed by Santander on behalf of its costumers over the Ripple blockchain creates demand for XRP. This drives the price up. Just remember that in the current horribly bearish market we’ve seen for nearly a year now (with the three last weeks being truly bloody) Ripple’s XRP has been the coin that’s performed the best.
Yes, it’s lost value too. But everybody is losing value, and Ripple’s red numbers are in the one-digit region, while everybody else’s is in two numbers. Let’s put it in words anybody can understand: over the last couple of weeks, XRP has outperformed everybody, including Bitcoin. It even became the second largest digital asset by market capitalization. This resilience comes, in part, because of Santander’s use of XRP to settle international payments.
Let’s review this partnership’s history briefly.
Last March, both Ripple Labs and Banco Santander announced that the Spanish giant was experimenting with several of the RippleNet liquidity products and creating pilot programs based on Ripple’s blockchain. This made Santander notice the levels of certainty, transparency, speed and low cost that are just impossible using the traditional financial tools.
Ed Metzger, Santander’s innovation head talked at Swell (Ripple’s yearly conference) about the way in which the bank will use Ripple’s xCurrent to improve their customer’s experience. He noted,
“We believe that financial services is moving to a world of open platforms where companies collaborate to deliver excellent customer service for their customers, and that’s at the core of what we’re doing with OnePay FX.”
What is OnePay FX, I hear you ask? It’s a mobile app developed by Santander, deployed for its customers, that went online last October 2nd. It was initially available in Spain, Brazil, the UK, and Poland. Mr. Metzger explained further that the app allows customers to process international transactions seamlessly, quickly, cheaply and easily.
Metzger added that,
“One of our customers was in Italy on holiday and parked in the wrong place. He needed to pay a fine and didn’t have his banking card. He was able to use the app to immediately pay the fine, and stop his car from being towed away. It’s four or five clicks to do something that would have taken an awful, awful long time in the past.”
While many of Ripple’s impressive strategic partnerships are still in the test stages, some of them are already working real-time in the real world. Santander is the poster boy in this context. It’s validating Ripple’s products and tokens. So don’t hate Ripple. It’s making crypto useful to people who don’t even know they’re using it. This is why XRP has stayed stable in the current market debacle, and that’s why it will stay so in the future.
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Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Global Coin Report and its affiliates, employees, writers, and subcontractors are cryptocurrency investors and from time to time may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency and read our full disclaimer.
Image Courtesy of Flickr.
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