Axis Bank has started cross-border payments over the blockchain using fintech company Ripple's technology. Axis Bank had partnered with Ripple earlier this year for financial settlements their solution which cuts costs and time in making a cross-border remittance. Currently, Axis Bank has launched a service for its retail customers in India to receive payments from RakBank in UAE and for its corporate customers in India to receive payments from Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore. The company says that Ripple’s technology can reduce the time for international money transfer to 5-10 seconds from the existing 3-5 days. The blockchain , the underlying technology in bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, is a shared digital ledger which is continuously updated with all transactions. This ledger keeps a record of each transaction that occurs across a fully distributed or peer-to-peer network, either public or private. Ripple uses the blockchain to transfer money but will require banks to become partners. So far, Ripple counts Standard Chartered Bank, Bank of America Merril Lynch, UBS Group, Mizuho etc as partner banks. In October, Ripple hit 100 member mark and most recently it partnered with card network American Express to help Spanish banking group, Santander to allow American Express business customers to make instant and traceable payments to Santander bank accounts in the UK. Blockchain developments in India - State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest bank, said that it will be deploying a smart contract for KYC solution over the blockchain. This will be deployed over BankChain, a community of Indian and foreign banks which…
