Ms Botín said that “innovation is going to continue and you have to be ahead of the pack”. Santander’s InnoVentures venture capital fund invested in Ripple in 2015, and has also taken stakes in other blockchain specialists such Blythe Masters’ Digital Asset Holdings. However, despite growing interest in the technology, some groups remain sceptical about the potential to use blockchain at scale. Swift, the bank-owned messaging system that currently handles more than half of all high-value international payments, said last month that “further progress is needed” before distributed ledgers can become more mainstream.

https://www.ft.com/content/1e47733e-3e2a-11e8-b9f9-de94fa33a81e