Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank Teams With Ripple For Payment App

Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), Thailand’s oldest bank, is partnering with Ripple to upgrade their mobile banking app to include cross-border payments for the country’s 16,000 customers.

Ripple helped them create SCB Easy, which will serve as a way for customers to deliver quick, no-cost, cross-border payments.

SVP of Commercial Banking Arthit Sriumporn said that the new services will bring happiness to people’s lives by streamlining the process of sending and receiving money at the 112-year-old bank.

He said that banking with cross-border transactions could sometimes be complicated due to filling out long and complicated forms in person at the bank, then waiting a long time for money to be sent.

But with mobile banking, Sriumporn said most of those headaches would go away — with Ripple’s service, even money from abroad can be sent and received instantly.

Sriumporn presented the app at Swell, in which he showed that money could be transferred into a recipient’s bank account within 40 seconds.

SCB Easy, launched in 2017, had 9 million customers by the end of their second year.

In 2018, SCB had 3,187 billion baht, the equivalent of $105 billion, and an operating income of 138.2 billion baht, or $4.6 billion.

SCB is also working with Ripple to create another app to offer EMVCo QR payments. EMVCo, a global company, is working to make sure customers can make payments using QR codes.

They’re working to make sure users can make payments throughout Southeast Asia even if they don’t have the country’s currency.

SCB was also the first company to trial Ripple’s multi-hop feature, which allowed banks to receive and forward payments without a relationship between two institutions. That has the effect of reducing transaction times.

SCB is also planning this year to expand into the countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Siam is coming into a new age of connectivity with its banks and retail, especially as JD.com and Central Group launched financial app Dolfin to help banks connect with customers online, with services like e-wallets and digital transfers.