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Banco Santander says its Ripple-powered payments app One Pay FX is giving its customers the ability to send cross-border transactions at far faster speeds than its competitors.

At the Santander International Banking Conference in Madrid, executive chairman Ana Botín highlighted the performance of the new mobile payments app, which runs on Ripple’s blockchain software solution xCurrent.

“You can do FX transfers, real-time, between the UK and continental Europe. And you can actually do Poland, Brazil and Chile – through Santander – for the same cost as Transferwise…

And that is the reason why we need to really think about what is real reciprocity. The devil is in the details and the timing.”

Instant payments processed by TransferWise, by comparison, are only delivered within the UK via the instant FPS payment system. According to the company’s explainer, payment delivery elsewhere in Europe and across the globe is slower.

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Both Santander and TransferWise are playing a key role in transforming the traditional pace of international payments, which have long taken two to three days to complete via conventional cross-border channels.

Santander launched One Pay FX in April, giving millions of its customers in Europe access to real-time cross-border payments. Botín told the Financial Times that the technology is already powering half of Santander Group’s FX payments.

“With this new initiative that is already in place, we’re actually covering 50% of all the FX payments that the Santander Group does annually.

And it works really well, because the rails that we’re using – which, as you say, we’ve collaborated with Ripple – we’ve been testing those for two years, actually with our own employees. And it works. It’s safe. It’s fully compliant, and obviously we’ve made sure we comply with all local regulations. So you’re in safe hands.”

In the long run, Botin says Santander plans to expand One Pay FX and give non-banking customers the ability to use the app to send money worldwide.

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