Ripple’s blockchain technology to be used to transfer GBP to UK’s Santander Bank from Turkey

Akbank, a Turkish bank, has announced that it is using Ripple’s blockchain technology to transfer Great Britain Pound [GBP] to UK’s Santander Bank from Turkey.

As the most devastating bear year approaches the end, some good news comes afloat as Olga Ulutaş, Executive Vice-President in charge of Direct Banking made his satisfaction of becoming the first bank to use Ripple’s blockchain technology for cross-border payments clear.

Referring to the announcement made last year about adopting Ripple’s blockchain technology, Ulutaş said that they’ve started international money transfer using blockchain technology. He continued:

“Now we have started to transfer money from GBP via Ripple to Santander UK with Blockchain infrastructure. With this important technology, our customers will now be able to benefit from the possibility of transferring money to international money transfers at a much lower cost. With the participation of new banks in the system, we continue our journey to expand this service through cooperation with different banks.”

GMT Israel’s largest and leading financial services company announced in their blog that they are authorized in using Ripple’s blockchain technology.

The blog stated:

“GMT is joining companies like MoneyGram, AmericanExpress, CIBC, Earthport, AKBANK and many more, who are already authorized to use Ripple’s platform.”

Although there are no mentions about the use of xRapid to facilitate the transactions, some people in the community are speculating that it could be xCurrent and not xRapid.

Back in June, Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple said at CBInsights that he is sure that at least one bank would use XRP. He said:

“I have publicly said we expect this year for at least one bank to use XRP in their payment flows to use xRapid”

When asked if he was sure, he replied that he was “… a 100% sure”. The community is putting two and two together and speculating that this could very well be that bank as 2018 has only 15 days left.

A Redditor mikenard77 commented:

“They are transferring GBP to Santander. This means they are using Santander as a hub, to pay out in multiple currencies with one bilateral relationship. Santander will send the needed currency to the recipient. Multihop does not require xRapid, but the most efficient multi-hop payments are done through xRapid.”

The news might also bring back the familiar “$589+ by the EoY” to life as it coincides with the well-known BearableGuy123’s riddle and Brad Garlinghouse’s comments.