Azimo partners with SCB for reliable and faster payments to Thailand

The London-headquartered international money transfer service, Azimo, has partnered with Thailand’s Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) to deliver instant payments for its customers from Europe to SCB bank accounts in Thailand.

Thailand is one of the top remittance destinations globally, says the World Bank, with more than $6 billion received from abroad each year, and Azimo says it still remains one of the most expensive countries to send and receive money. And this is something the U.K. fintech wants to focus on and help change as it continues to expand to Asia as a key corridor.

The SCB strategic partnership takes advantage of “PromptPay,” which facilitates a real-time clearing and settlement infrastructure to enable instant transfers to Thai bank accounts. So, in simple words, it is similar to the U.K.’s Faster Payments.

“More and more countries are going to instant payment,” Azimo co-founder and executive chairman Michael Kent tells me over WhatsApp. “Thailand recently launched theirs, and this partnership with the largest bank in the country allows us to get the time to settle payments down from around 24 hours to an average of 22 seconds. It is faster to send money to Thailand than to someone else in U.K.”.

In the light of foregoing, the new service uses RippleNet, the global payment network that harnesses blockchain to let users track funds, delivery time, and status.