Thailand's Largest Bank Ignores Ripple – Chooses Stellar Solution for Global Transactions

This fintech company uses Stellar blockchain. SCB says the new partnership will open doors to more successful cross-border transfers from South Korea to Thailand.

Before picking Lightnet, Siam commercial bank had joined forces with Ripple's partner Azimo in April to open a payment channel between Thailand and Europe using Ripplenet.

However, with the announcement of the new partnership, an SCB executive has praised the new service model saying it "will increase its service capabilities while boosting transaction speed in a secure environment." Additionally, the service will be offered "at a lower cost, hence helping to meet the fast-growing demands for better international fund transfers.

"We expect that this new service model will help raise the service experience bar for seamless cross-border transfers for our customers and serve the growing demand for better cross-border remittances," says Srihanath Lamsam, vice president.

SCB is yet to explain the reason for partnering with Lightnet. Ahead of its long term relationship with Azimo for this specific corridor. However, the bank stated that this collaboration would expand the scope of its international fund transfer services.

SCB's choice of Lightnet threatens to make SWIFT and Western Union irrelevant and indicates that Stellar might be winning the battle with Ripple in Thailand, one of the world's largest remittances markets.

Both Stellar and Ripple seek to make cross-border payments more effective, and both tend to be targeting the same markets, although they have concentrated on working with financial institutions.

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