Per a recent website update, Siam Commercial Bank Thailand has officially agreed to using Ripple to power cross-border payments through its Easy Pay app. Further, the site gives a detailed description of how it is using Ripple’s Technology.

                                                                   Source- SCB Website

Previously, the bank had denied its plans to start using Ripple’s XRP token, contrary to earlier indications. The bank’s denial was communicated in a tweet published on June 7

                                                                 Source- Twitter

Easy Pay lets the bank’s customers transfer funds to US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Singapore. Moreover, payments to the United Kingdom and Singapore are transferred in real-time.

An SCB official said

“With Ripple blockchain technology, money reaches the destination account within seconds or no more than three days, depending on the money transfer system in the destination country. Why did we look at Ripple? Because we saw that it has a customer-centric capability. It was giving customers what they wanted, not what we as a bank wanted to push.”

SCB’s tryst with Ripple began in 2016, and the company’s chief technology officer Colin Dinn said,

“With Ripple, we found a way and a partner that could actually work with us in a very different way… We have got aggressive ambition. We want to do things differently. We want to really change. We don’t see a bank being relevant to its customers in the next five to eight years. In fact, my personal view – not the bank – but my personal view is it’s going to be very hard for a bank to exist in five to eight years. There will be a product behind some other brand.”

Interestingly, the bank has several blockchain-related initiatives in its name. In April, Thai state oil company PTT Exploration and Production Public Company Limited and SCB successfully carried out a test of blockchain’s use for cross-border business-to-business payments.

In September 2018, SCB had introduced RippleNet’s multi-hop feature. The feature allows for settlement of payments on behalf of other financial institutions present on the network.