PayPal has launched its mobile payments app Xoom across Europe to provide faster and cheaper international transfers. It hopes the new offering with make it cheaper than traditional payment services and more convenient than sending crypto.
Xoom will let residents of 32 European countries send money to people in more than 130 countries worldwide–but if those recipients fall outside the 30-odd countries they can’t send money back.
Xoom has partnered with major banks and other finance firms to facilitate the money transfers, with customers able to transfer up to £8,800 pounds ($11,029) per transaction.
The mobile payments app offers next-day money transfers at fees lower than its main payments platform PayPal. According to the website, transfers on Xoom cost around $4 in Europe and $9 to countries further afield.
Everything we know about who’s using Ripple’s most XRP-intensive product
Is XRP the standard for international money transfer? A fast, low-fee digital currency designed for cross-border payments, it’s too soon to tell whether XRP will usurp SWIFT, the 800-pound gorilla in the space. However, XRP is definitely getting more and more traction lately: a growing number of high-profile companies are testing it—and some are fully committed to using it in their payment services. This is significant because there’s been some confusion over who, exactly, is using or even testi...
This brings PayPal in line with international money remittance services, like TransferWise and MoneyGram who charge fees between $5-12 and $4-10 respectively. It also sets Xoom against blockchain-based rivals like Ripple. However, if it wants to compete with the likes of Ripple, it’s going to need to speed things up, and drop the price significantly. To send crypto blockchain-based transactions via Ripple takes less than a minute –as long as you have the right wallets in place before you initiate the transaction–and costs cents. Some have gone one better.
Europe’s third largest bank Banco Santander is using Ripple technology (but not XRP) to facilitate cross-border payments on its One Pay FX app. On this platform, users are able to make same day transfers, for free. By eschewing the blockchain, PayPal’s latest innovation is already yesterday’s news.
