San Francisco based blockchain payments network Ripple Labs has raised $4m of Series A funding, with participation from Santander InnoVentures. Including the Series A funds Ripple raised earlier this year, this brings total size of the round to $32m. Ripple plans to introduce a new payments technology, known as Interledger, which it claims will offer banks the same speed and cost benefits as the three-year-old Ripple network but with improved privacy and scalability. It will also allow banks to pay transaction fees in local currencies rather than having to use XRP (the native digital currency of the Ripple network).