Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) has leveraged RippleNet to upgrade the mobile app SCB Easy for an instant, low-cost cross-border payment solution.
The app was presented by SCB’s Senior Vice-President of Commercial Banking, at Ripple’s annual Swell conference, where money wads successfully sent to the recipient’s bank account within 40 seconds.
Arthit Sriumporn said:
It is so difficult to send and receive money today. People must physically go to a bank branch, fill out long and complicated forms and wait for payments to be received—with no transparency. With our service, their loved ones from abroad can transfer payment and receive money immediately.
The 112-year-old SCB is Thailand’s biggest bank, and had assets of 3,187 billion baht ($105 billion) and an operating income of 138.2 billion baht ($4.6 billion) in 2018. In terms of assets, it is Thailand’s biggest bank.
In 2020, the SCB have announced plans to expand their operations into countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, where less than 35% of the population have bank accounts. SCB Easy is an extremely effective use case in this regard, as it allows customers to open new accounts online, without actually visiting a physical location.
SCB and Ripple are also working together to offer EMVCo QR payments thought the app. EMVCo is a global body working on making QR payments standard across the world. With this integration, the plan is that anyone using the SCB Easy app within Southeast Asia can make payments in another country without using the local currency.
This is a fantastic use case for blockchain, and perfectly encapsulated in the comments by Sriumporn:
Imagine you are a tourist coming to Thailand, and you can use your home country mobile application to scan for payment and eliminate the need to exchange for local currency. You can use your mobile app, scan the QR payment and receive goods right away.