This is a major development as it shows that Thai Banks are willing to take the lead in using blockchain and crypto currencies.

 

 

Press release below.

 

SBI Remit and Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) have introduced the first commercially-available remittance service powered by the crypto currency Ripple, using the system to send money in JPY to a recipient’s SCB savings account in Thailand and receive funds in 3 to 5 seconds.

 

Remittance flows between Japan and Thailand have been steadily growing and currently make up roughly $250 million USD annually. Yet, the remittance infrastructure hasn’t kept up with customer needs. Funds transfers can take up to two days, fees average a whopping 5-7% for each transaction, and there is no visibility into when funds actually arrive.

With the roll-out of instant bank-to-bank payments between the two markets, SBI and SCB believe they can create a new revenue opportunity estimated at $10-15 million per year.

Nobuo Ando representative director, SBI Remit comments: “It is our duty to continuously search for superior technological solutions to deliver ever improved remittance services for our customers. In this case, Ripple was impressive in concept and turned out to be more so in practice. Furthermore, we can expect to have more favorable foreign exchange opportunities as Ripple’s network expands. For this, we welcome more institutions to join and help us offer competitive remittance services over conventional methods to our valued customers.”

Over the long-term, he says, the service will also be available in SCB’s other key markets across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

Ripple announced a joint venture with Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings in January early last year with the aim of driving the adoption of its distributed ledger technology across Asian markets.

 

Here is the page on SCB Bank's website about this new service - http://www.scb.co.th/en/news/2017-06-29/nws-blockchain

 

 

Edited July 1, 20179 yr by seancbk
Additional info

Glad to see them moving in the right direction - no matter why SCB has been my primary bank for a while.

5 minutes ago, SiamBeast said:

Glad to see them moving in the right direction - no matter why SCB has been my primary bank for a while.

 

Siam Commercial Bank have been pro Fintech for a while now. 

I actually have all my accounts, both personal and business/company with Kasikorn.   But I think I may open an account with SCB now.

On 7/1/2017 at 6:57 PM, seancbk said:

This is a major development as it shows that Thai Banks are willing to take the lead in using blockchain and crypto currencies.

Ripple is not based on blockchain technology and my understanding is that the banks will send each other IOUs denominated in JPY and THB (using the Ripple network/protocol), so not using crypto currencies per se.

 

The news here seems to be that banks are willing to forego the established/legacy(?) wire transfer networks to bring lower fees and faster processing times to their customers.