• The service will offer faster and more affordable remittances to the Philippines and Thailand
• Payments will be received instantly
• ‘Cross’ replaces older, slow and expensive archaic cross-border transfer services  

Coinone Transfer has launched South Korea’s first blockchain-powered mobile transfer App. The service, ‘Cross’ will offer faster, low-cost cash transfers to the Philippines and Thailand.

Ripple lowering costs to service providers

According to a December 10, 2018 press release by Ripple, the new platform, christened “Cross,” will use Ripple’s cross-border payment technology xCurrent. xCurrent may not be a blockchain-based platform but it uses Ripple’s digital currency XRP.

Coinone Transfer is a subsidiary of Coinone crypto exchange and its mobile App and web service are the first such services in South Korea. According to Ripple, Coinone transfer is expanding its services across the rest of Southeast Asia in the near future, through partnerships made with Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) in Thailand and Cebuana Lhuillier in the Philippines.  The official statement said:

“Coinone Transfer’s partnership with SCB also will soon offer Cross customers a direct link to PromptPay, which enables any recipient with a bank account in Thailand to receive a payment directly and instantly.”

Coinone Transfer entered Ripple’s blockchain network in May 2018 during which the company’s CEO Wonhee Shin spoke about their intention to execute Ripple’s xCurrent solution for their cross-border payments and settlement.

They made the announcement about the launch of the Cross remittance service via an official tweet dated October 15, stating that there were plans to expand the service to Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand.  The team launched the service in Thailand on November 30; the announcement read:

“Until December 16th, you can send to Siam Commercial Bank accounts. But after that, you can send to any bank in Thailand for just 1% of the sending amount (min. fee: KRW 5,000). The money will be received in less than 30 minutes! […] please note the maximum sending amount of KRW 1,500,000 per transaction.”

Keeping up with the times

The new platform follows recent changes made to South Korea’s remittance laws, which allow companies that aren’t banks to provide cross-border payment services in the country.

Before this, there were limited remittance options which apart from being limited were also expensive and used complicated processes to trace payment history. The government started offering Global Remittance Licenses to non-bank institutions to operate the services beginning July 2017.   

The initiative by Coinone Transfers takes advantage of RippleNet’s technology to enable payment providers and banks provide their customers with a hassle-free experience. Ripple said:

“This combined with the introduction of the new Cross service finally provides these customers with a better way to send money abroad — options that are less costly, faster and more reliable than traditional options.”