As it aims to provide small businesses and enterprise clients with instant payments, Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) of Thailand is poised to open up its consumer cross-border payments app, which is powered by Ripple, to companies. The financial institution had harnessed RippleNet earlier in 2020 to link up with banking partners globally, according to reports.
SCB’s SVP of Commercial Banking Arthit Sriumporn said in a statement, “Being part of RippleNet has helped us to completely enhance our customer experience, expand our business and keep SCB moving into the future.”
In addition, Ripple and SCB are at work on an app based on quick-response codes that would let tourists tap into their native country’s app for transactions without the need to ponder exchange rates.
The report comes as news surfaced in January that SCB was teaming with Ripple to bolster its mobile banking app to enable cross-border payments for the nation’s 16,000 clients. Sriumporn said at the time that the new offerings would help simplify the process of sending and receiving money.
Sriumporn said that banking with cross-border transactions could be complex at times because of long and intricate forms at the bank, along with an extended wait for the money to be sent. With mobile banking, however, Sriumporn said many of those frustrations would disappear, as even money from other countries can be sent and received instantaneously through Ripple’s service.
SCB had 3,187 billion baht ($105 billion) in equivalent money, along with 138.2 billion baht ($4.6 billion) in operating income in 2018. The bank was the first company to pilot Ripple’s multi-hop feature, which lets banks forward and receive payments without a relationship between the two banks, which is said to result in shorter transaction times.
SCB was also intending to grow into the countries of Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar, per news in January.
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