Ripple Partner, Santander Closes 140 Branches Over Digitalization. Is Crypto Adoption The Next?

Santander Bank, a Spanish-owned bank and Ripple Blockchain loyal partner, has revealed it is closing down around 140 branches, putting nothing less than 1,270 jobs at risk.

The reason for the closures, according to the Bank, are due to the fact that customers are looking up to digital banking.

The bank said “changes in how customers are choosing to carry out their banking” is the reason it is changing pattern.

Digital transactions, according to Santander, have increased by 99%, while the Branch transactions have reduced by 23% in the last three Years, a germane reason to change its dealing pattern to satisfy customers.

Susan Allen, Head of Retail and Business Banking at Santander said, “we have had to take some very difficult decisions over our less visited branches”.

However, the bank said its other 614 Branches will comprise of bigger branches with outstanding community facilities and smaller branches that are going to be using state of the art technology.

Santander stated further that there is plan to spend £55m in the next two years to redesign 100 branches to stay in line with technological advancement.

Santander-Ripple Partnership

Around October, Ripple Labs announced Banco Santander has integrated RippleNet in its OnePay FX, a mobile app designed purposely to remove notable glitches in cross-border remittance.

The application, designed between $80 billion banking giant Banco Santander and Ripple was an outcome of Ripple Labs and Santander announced strategic partnership in March of 2018.

Since the announcement time, Santander, according to Ripple team, has been experimenting with RIppleNet to achieve an all-encompassing remittance app that has the potential of serving different countries and regions at the same time.

During the SWELL Conference organized by Ripple, Santander Head of Innovation Ed Metzger declared that the aim of the bank is to make use of Ripple’s xCurrent, an enterprise blockchain deployed by banks and financial institutions across the globe.

He said: “We believe that financial services is moving to a world of open platforms where companies collaborate to deliver excellent customer service for their customers, and that’s at the core of what we’re doing with OnePay FX.”

Ana Botín, Santander Group’s executive chairman said, the bank can now cover more than half of its annual international remittance using OnePay FX.

Not long after, Ripple-powered OnePay FX received the Financial Innovation Award 2018 for Banco Santander.

The award was received in “Innovation in product or service design –business and Corporate” section due to awesome performance of OnePay FX, a Ripple’s xCurrent-dependent application.

With the new digitalization effect happening in Banco Santander, there is hope the bank will jump into using cryptocurrency with the help of RippleNet’s xRapid since the £80 billion bank is connected to RippleNet already.