Ripple’s partner Santander has announced it is linking up with eBay to launch loans app centered at servicing over 200,000 small businesses that are using online retail site eBay.

While the app is focused on small businesses in the UK, it is also geared towards increasing eBay’s offering to its multitudes of sellers and to win Amazon in the UK, while also beating other small rivals across the globe.

Both Santander, which partnered with Ripple early 2018, and eBay are going to be lending small businesses loans to fully fight digital rivals, both big and small.

The application, dubbed Asto, is a financial app designed to offer loans to small and medium-sized businesses selling products on eBay.

Asto will use eBay data to calculate the sales and cash flow of eligible businesses. The firm is one of Santander’s startups developed to beat competitors. Asto is part of Santander’s €20bn technology investment plan expected to run within the span of four years.

According to Asto chief executive, Sigga Sigurdardóttir, partnering with eBay will strenghten small business owners inneed of funds. The technology will make funding available to them within minutes compared to the traditional loaning system which takes several weeks.

Santander and Ripple Partners to produce OnePay FX

Late 2018, $80 million banking giant Banco Santander announced a partnership with Ripple Inc. The firm launched a Ripple-centric cross-border remittance app dubbed OnePay FX.

The partnership was first announced in March 2018, however, it was not clear what the collaboration was centred on as at then. Since that time, Santander had been testing RippleNet before finally announcing what the partnership would be focused on.

During the Swell 2018 conference, Ed Metzger, head of innovations at Banco Santander, said the bank integrated Ripple purposely to make use of xCurrent, a Ripple blockchain solution deployed by big banks across the globe for enterprise purposes.

He said: “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.”

After the launch, OnePay FX is being used in Spain, Poland, the UK, and Brazil before fully expanding to Europe (17 countries). In March, Santander’s annual report reflects that OnePay FX saw 230% Growth in 8 Months of launch. In fact in 2018, the Ripple-powered app won Financial Innovation Award 2018.

Will Santander and eBay Partnership Help Ripple’s XRP?

Few months back, a Santander social media manager mistakenly wrote that Santander was using XRP for cross-border remittance. However, the bank latter clarified that it was an error.

Up till this moment, OnePay FX and other Santander services have not announced the usage of XRP. However, we cannot finally rule out the possibility of this in the nearest future. If Santander makes use of XRP, there is high change the newly unveiled loans service for eBay makes use of XRP as well, thereby linking eBay and Ripple.