Azimo, a digital money transfer service, and leading universal bank Siam Commercial Bank is launching Europe to Thailand instant cross-border payments. The newly released connection is being made possible through the global payments network powered by Ripple.
The increase in digital payments is critical for people to send funds to family, especially in those countries where incomes are low and the need for affordable and immediate transactions is crucial under the current pandemic the world is facing.
One of those destinations, Thailand according to the World Bank, is the one of the top recipients and sees over $6.7 billion being sent from overseas yearly. Currently, it is also has one of the highest costs for receiving and send money.
Commenting on this, Ripple said; “The high cost and slow cross-border payments experience today leaves remitters with few options, providing an opportunity for global financial institutions to build differentiated value propositions in this market and deliver an improved customer service experience”,
It gives credibility to connections such as those released by Azimo and bank Siam Commercial Bank to solve this problem and reduced costs for those who need to reduce their costs. Prior to its launch, those being sent or sending money had to wait a day or more for those funds to arrive, however resultant on the RippleNet connection with SCB, those funds can now clear in under a minutes as a result of the Azimo cross-border payment platform
Chairman Michael Kent, the co-Founder and Executive of Azimo stated; “More and more countries are going to instant payment. Thailand recently launched their instant payment network, and this partnership with the largest bank in the country allows us to get the time to settle payments down from around 24 hours to an average of 22 seconds. [It’s] faster to send money to Thailand than to someone else in Europe”.
This launch comes just after Ripple announcing the launch of Azimo being launched on RippleNet’s On-Demand Liquidity service so as to allow for instant payments within the Philippines. The combined services now remove the large and decades long burden of cross-border payments.
Ripple continued its statement lamenting that; “People can’t and shouldn’t wait days or even weeks to receive payments from loved ones. RippleNet and ODL are allowing financial institutions to process global payments at unprecedented speed, changing the status quo. By making new connections and expanding services like Azimo’s partnership with SCB, Ripple customers are able to deliver the best experience in cross-border payments today.”
