Santander Generates Controversy After Saying that it is Using XRP for International Payments

It is widely known that Santander and Ripple are working together to improve cross-border payments and provide better services to customers across Europe and the world. However, the bank informed that the institution is using XRP in order to process international payments to 18 different EU countries and the United States. But they made a mistake.

Which Ripple Service Is Santander Using? XRP Or xCurrent?

There are many individuals and companies in the virtual currency space that are making mistakes when making reference to XRP and Ripple. In order for Ripple to disassociate itself from the virtual currency they use, they have decided to establish a clear line between Ripple the company and XRP the virtual currency.

Ripple is a company that provides services to financial institutions that want to process fast and cheap cross-border transactions. Meanwhile, XRP is the virtual currency used by Ripple to enhance even further its services and provide liquidity on-demand to these institutions that request for it.

Santander is one of the more than 200 companies working with Ripple that are using their services. The firm is using the xCurrent product developed by Ripple to power their Pay FX application on iOS devices.

On March 23, Santander UK decided to conduct a Q&A session on Twitter. One of the users, @wesgranger, asked the institution how is Santander

“getting on with using XRP for payments.” To what the bank answered that they are doing great and they are using “XRP for international payments to 18 EU countries and the USA.”

They also said that they are using XRP on their iPhone application called One Pay FX.

Hey Wes, we're doing great. We're using XRP for international payments to 18 EU countries and the USA. This is on our iPhone app called One Pay FX. ^TC

— Santander UK Help (@santanderukhelp) March 23, 2019

Clearly, the community got very surprised about this. Is Santander using XRP? This could be great news for XRP supporters, but it turned out that now. Santander is not using XRP. In another tweet uploaded just a few hours ago, the bank informed that they have given incorrect information due to a misunderstanding.

They apologized and explained that the One Pay FX uses xCurrent only. This is why they have decided to share the press release regarding the launch of the One Pay FX application.

The press release reads as follows:

“The new service uses xCurrent, a technology based on distributed ledgers owned by California-based Ripple. InnoVentures, Santander’s $200 million fintech venture capital fund, invested in Ripple in 2015.”

In this press release, the firm informed that in the next months it could offer instant international payments in several markets. At the same time, they have said that Santander will become the first bank rolling out a blockchain-based international payment service to retail customers in different countries.

We are sorry, unfortunately due to a misunderstanding we have given incorrect information. We do apologise for the confusion this has caused. One Pay FX uses xCurrent only. You can find out more here: https://t.co/EGWMMqZhkA.

— Santander UK Help (@santanderukhelp) March 24, 2019

Other users on social media have been very cautious about what Santander informed via Twitter regarding the use of XRP technologies. Most of the users were waiting for an official press release confirming the implementation of this digital asset.

XRP is currently the third largest virtual currency with a market capitalization of $12.93 billion. Each XRP can be purchased for $0.31 and in the last 24 hours, it has lost 0.56% of its value.