Standard Chartered completes its first real-time cross border payment for businesses

Using Ripple’s enterprise blockchain solutions, Standard Chartered has completed its first real-time cross-border payment for businesses with another major correspondent bank.

The bank has been working with Ripple for a while now. It has recently worked with the blockchain company back in May to release an app that lets customers make international payments using blockchain technology. It has also backed the company financially, most recently two weeks ago when it participated in a $55m Series B funding round.

The bank says cross-border business transactions usually take up to two days, but its test managed to do it in under ten seconds.

Alex Manson, Global Head, Transaction Banking, Standard Chartered, said: “This initiative is an integral part of our digitisation agenda in the area of distributed ledger technology as we continue to explore new ways of adding value to our clients and the industry.

“Digitisation is a priority for the Bank to better serve our clients by connecting business communities in a more efficient way. Payments innovation is a key area of focus in order to bank our clients’ ecosystem and make it more cohesive, reduce risk and increase transparency.”

The bank said its investment in, and collaboration with, Ripple, is all part of its ‘Banking the ecosystem’ strategy. It’s part of the bank’s overall strategy that aims to connect business communities and facilitate increased trade, commerce and investments across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

“Standard Chartered envisions that the future of banking will be about ‘Banking the ecosystem’, a differentiated value proposition whereby Standard Chartered will deploy innovative and customised solutions that best suit its clients’ ‘ecosystems’ – the international and domestic network of suppliers, distributors and customers of all sizes that together drive global trade and commerce,” the bank said in a statement.

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