Chainlink Partners With 47 Banks Across South Korea and Europe to Streamline Cross-Border Payments

The initiative, known as Project Pangea, plans to use stablecoins to settle multimillion-dollar foreign exchange transactions between Europe and South Korea in near real time.

Chainlink said it has joined a banking consortium collectively managing over $10 trillion in assets, aiming to enable real-time, stablecoin-based cross-border FX settlement within the next year.

The coalition, called Project Pangea, seeks to reshape global FX markets, according to Niki Ariyasinghe, Chainlink’s vice president for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, in a video interview on Tuesday. Alongside Chainlink, participants include Qivalis, a euro stablecoin consortium backed by 37 European banks, and UniKA, a Korean banking alliance representing more than 10 commercial banks.

The project will explore shifting FX settlement away from the traditional T+2 model toward near-instant T+0 settlement using regulated euro- and Korean won–pegged stablecoins, which maintain a 1:1 value with their underlying currencies.

A key focus is testing whether these stablecoins can be exchanged via atomic payment-versus-payment (PvP) settlement, where both sides of a trade settle simultaneously or not at all, reducing counterparty and settlement risk.

Ariyasinghe said the initiative goes beyond a proof of concept, positioning it as an effort to build real production infrastructure rather than theoretical experimentation.

“This is not just a POC,” he said. “Everyone is coming in with their eyes wide open. The focus is on building real infrastructure… The goal is live transactions within a legal and regulatory framework within the next 12 months.”

The project targets the Europe–South Korea trade corridor, which processes more than $150 billion in goods and services annually, making it one of the world’s largest trade routes. It also reflects broader regional trends, with industry data suggesting that around 60% of global stablecoin payments already occur in Asia.

Ariyasinghe said this highlights where real demand is emerging, particularly in regions where financial infrastructure is still developing and tokenized cash can fill existing gaps.

Rather than requiring banks to overhaul legacy systems, Project Pangea is designed as a middleware layer. Institutions will initiate transactions through SWIFT, while Chainlink’s infrastructure translates those messages into atomic settlement instructions on a neutral ledger known as the Pangea L1 Network.

The system is intended to integrate with existing SWIFT and ISO 20022 standards, allowing traditional banks to connect to blockchain-based settlement rails without replacing core infrastructure.

While some may see the initiative as competing with Ripple’s cross-border payments efforts, Chainlink frames it as complementary rather than adversarial.

“I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as a rival,” Ariyasinghe said. “We’re a technology provider. It’s about applying the technology where it creates value and expanding the network organically.”

Ultimately, the project aims to reduce settlement delays that trap capital in transit.

“If I’m sending money to you and it’s stuck for days, that capital can’t be used,” he said. “Reducing that delay as much as possible is clearly beneficial for customers.”

By compressing settlement times from days to near real time, participating institutions hope to lower liquidity costs, reduce counterparty risk, and improve capital efficiency in cross-border trade.

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