Banco Santander S A : Santander joins forces with other banks create a steering group to develop instant international transfers

• Santander is taking part in several projects aimed at stepping up the plan to allow payments between individual customers and companies to be made using blockchain technology (distributed ledger), which could radically reduce the time and cost of many financial transactions.

Madrid, 23 September 2016. Banco Santander has announced today the launch of a committee to develop instant global payments in collaboration with other entities. These include: Bank of America Merril Lynch, Unicredit, Standard Chartered, Westpac Banking Corporativo and Royal Bank of Canada.

The committee, known as the 'Global Payments Steering Group', will be tasked with the creation and upkeep of regulations applicable for international transfers using blockchain technology developed by the US startup Ripple. Blockchain is a distributed ledger used by a large number of financial entities, making this technology extremely safe.

Julio Faura, head of R&D at Banco Santander, explained: 'It's time for banks to push on and move from discussing the potential benefits of blockchain, to making them a reality. As ever, the devil is in the details. We are joining the GPSG in order to contribute to the definition of the standards and processes which the industry now needs in order to move ahead and build better payments networks.'

Banco Santander is working on various projects linked to blockchain with banks, startups and developers, such as the R3 consortium of 50 banks, the 'Utility Settlement Coin' (USC) project and the Hyperledger and Ethereum platforms. The bank's objective is to develop the use of blockchain technology to offer customers services that are even more efficient, fast and safe. The distributed ledger technology could, for instance, radically reduce the time and cost of many financial transactions.

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