Spanish banking giant Santander is one of the earliest companies to join RippleNet and invest in Ripple.

One Pay FX

Santander launched One Pay FX, a money transfer solution that leverages RippleNet to settle cross-border transactions, in 2018. Santander said the solution offers transparency, competitive cost, and better speed, improving the overall customer experience. One Pay FX is currently available for Santander’s customers in six countries: Spain, the U.K., Brazil, Poland, Portugal, and Chile, with plans to expand to Mexico soon.

PagoFX

Today, Santander launched the much anticipated PagoFX. PagoFX, launched as an autonomous fintech startup, allows UK residents with a debit card issued by any UK bank or financial institution to send money abroad using just their smartphone.

Today we announce the UK launch of @PagoFx, a low-cost international money transfer service.



We will charge no fees at all for the next 2 months, recognising the ongoing pandemic. @PagoFx is coming to more European countries later this year. — Santander (@bancosantander) April 16, 2020

According to Santander’s announcement:

“PagoFX is available via a mobile app on iOS and Android and allows users to seamlessly and quickly send money abroad from their smartphone with guaranteed low costs, bank-level security and customer support via in-app chat, web and e-mail. This new service is one of the most affordable providers through its competitive and transparent pricing, including real-time foreign exchange rates.”

International payments can currently be made from the UK to the US, the eurozone, Poland, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and the Czech Republic, with plans to introduce further currencies and payment options in the short term.

The launch is another milestone in Santander’s four-year, 20 billion-euro digital technology pledge. Payments are a cornerstone of Santander’s open financial services platform, which aims to create fast, simple and safe digital services for consumers, merchants and SMEs around the world. Capitalising on successful and proven technologies, PagoFX is an open-market version of Santander’s existing international money transfer service One Pay FX, which offers transparent and quick international transfers to its bank customers in key countries in Europe and the Americas.

PagoFX and Ripple

Even though PagoFX is an oper-market version of One Pay FX (that runs on Ripple), PagoFX does not.

After inquiring with PagoFX whether the app runs on Ripple we received the following reply:

No, PagoFX doesn’t currently use Ripple. Our payment platform uses a variety of channels and counterparties to ensure our best-in-class service. In the future, those channels may include Ripple when it can improve customer experience. Improving customer experience is at the heart of what we do. On the other hand, One Pay FX, the exclusive international payments service for Santander customers in key countries, uses blockchain-based technology from Ripple (xCurrent only, not XRP).

There has been a lot of speculation in the past few months whether PagoFX would use RippleNet or even if it was the XRP version of One Pay FX. This does not seem to be the case, for now.

Update: Cedric Menager (Chief Executive of PagoFX) has confirmed on the Financial Times that PagoFX does not use RippleNet.

“However, although Mr Menager — who also worked on One Pay — said PagoFX was “inspired by” the previous effort, it decided against using the much-hyped tech for its open-market business.”