Author: Ripple is looking to expand its presence in Asia, forming a new partnership with Siam Commercial Bank. The latter will reportedly develop a new type of mobile application for faster and cheaper cross-border payments, which will run on Ripple.
Ripple Partners With SCB
Ripple recently announced its newest partnership with Thailand’s oldest bank – Sian Commercial Bank (SCB). According to it, the latter will create an application running on Ripple, dubbed SCB Easy, which will be used for low-cost cross-border payments.
According to the statement, the app will target the Asian market initially, as eight out of the top ten countries using mobile payments can be found there. Moreover, according to SCB’s SVP of Commercial Banking, Arthit Sriumporn, people are experiencing difficulties and delays when they send money, and the bank’s new product will help in this manner:
“It is so difficult to send and receive money today. People must physically go to a bank branch, fill out long and complicated forms, and wait for payments to be received – with no transparency. With our service, their loved ones from abroad can transfer payment and receive money immediately.”
Additionally, the report informs that during the presentation of SCB Easy, the payment was completed within 40 seconds, which comes as a result of Ripple’s quick, low-cost system. The partnership between the two will also deliver cross-border EMVCo QR payments in the near future.
Ripple’s Developments And XRP
In late 2019, Ripple announced its plans to expand in South America as well. The company has already made several partnerships with some large banks in Brazil to utilize XRP for remittance payments. However, the managing director of the country said that Ripple will work with other establishments not only in Brazil but in the whole South American region to provide more accessible payment solutions.
As far as Ripple’s native cryptocurrency goes, XRP has recently made the news as it was included in Binance Futures’ perpetual contract trading pairs. It quickly spiked with over 10% to over $0.225, but it has since retraced to the current level of $0.204.
It’s also worth noting that the community started speculating regarding potential insider trading, as XRP’s price surged before the announcement was published. Since then, though, Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, has firmly declined the rumors, saying that “contracts are added to the API ahead of time, anyone can see it.”
