Jeonbuk Bank Adopts Ripple Payments for Cross-Border Business Transfers, Becoming First Korean Regional Bank to Do So
Key Takeaways
- •Jeonbuk Bank is the first regional bank in South Korea to deploy Ripple Payments for business remittances.
- •Ripple says the service is designed to replace multi-day SWIFT transfers with near-real-time, 24/7 cross-border settlement.
- •The Jeonbuk deal is Ripple’s third Korean partnership this year, following KBank and Kyobo Life Insurance.
- •The announcement does not say whether XRP, RLUSD, or another asset will be used for settlement.
- •The partnerships come as South Korea works to finalize its Digital Asset Basic Act and related digital-asset rules.
Ripple has partnered with Jeonbuk Bank to deploy Ripple Payments for cross-border business remittances, making the South Korean lender the first regional bank in the country to adopt the service. The agreement is also Ripple's third Korean partnership this year, following earlier agreements with KBank and Kyobo Life Insurance.
Ripple announced the deal on X:
Jeonbuk Bank is the first regional bank in Korea to deploy Ripple Payments, replacing multi-day SWIFT transfers with near real-time, 24/7 cross-border settlement for its business customers. Our third Korean partnership this year, after Kyobo Life Insurance and Kbank, partnering…
The service is intended to provide near-real-time settlement for Jeonbuk's business customers — including import-export companies, IT startups, and online content creators — which have historically relied on transfers that take days to complete. Those customer segments are among the most exposed to cross-border payment friction in South Korea's trade-dependent economy. Jeonbuk, headquartered in Jeonju in North Jeolla Province, is one of a small number of provincial lenders operating alongside the nationwide banks — KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana and Woori — that dominate Korean corporate and retail banking, so a regional bank adopting first, ahead of the Seoul-based majors, is the distinction the announcement turns on.
The expansion adds to Ripple's institutional presence in South Korea, but the Jeonbuk announcement does not yet specify whether XRP, RLUSD, or another settlement asset will be used for the remittances.
Executives point to institutional momentum
Ripple Asia-Pacific Managing Director Fiona Murray said the Jeonbuk partnership reflects momentum in Korea's institutional financial sector as financial institutions build digital-asset capabilities and seek long-term infrastructure partners. Jeonbuk Bank President Park Choon-won said the partnership would support the lender's ambitions in digital finance and serve as a new growth engine for the bank.
Ripple Payments is presented as an alternative to traditional transfers that pass through multiple intermediary banks via the SWIFT network. Ripple said the service can complete settlement in seconds to minutes and operate around the clock, rather than relying on transfers that can take days. The product is the current branding of the network formerly known as RippleNet, whose On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service used XRP as a bridge asset between currencies — background that frames the recurring question of which asset will actually settle the Korean deployments.
KBank pilot and the Palisade wallet
The Jeonbuk partnership follows Ripple's April partnership with KBank, South Korea's first internet-only bank. KBank serves 15 million users and is the exclusive banking partner of Upbit, South Korea's largest crypto exchange.
KBank and Ripple are conducting a second-phase proof of concept using Ripple's Palisade digital wallet to test on-chain remittances to the United Arab Emirates and Thailand. That pilot currently uses stablecoin-based settlement rather than XRP as a bridge asset, and the partnership remains a multi-phase proof of concept rather than a live commercial remittance product.
Kyobo Life and the wider Korea strategy
Jeonbuk also follows Ripple's April agreement with Kyobo Life Insurance, identified by Ripple as Korea's largest life insurer, which partnered with the company to explore tokenized government bond settlement using Ripple Custody. Murray was involved on Ripple's side in that partnership.
Together, the three partnerships span custody, wallet infrastructure, and payments. Ripple's Jeonbuk release describes these different starting points as part of an approach designed to support institutions across custody, payments, treasury, and wallet infrastructure.
The agreements are arriving as South Korea finalizes its Digital Asset Basic Act, a digital-asset framework expected to classify stablecoins as payment instruments and impose new requirements on cross-border digital-asset activity. Reporting indicates Korean financial institutions have been accelerating blockchain infrastructure agreements as the framework develops, including a reported consortium of Korean banks, brokerages and insurers formed to explore a jointly issued won-backed stablecoin.
KBank has said it plans to continue technical verification of stablecoin remittance use cases while South Korea's legal framework develops, and it has not confirmed a commercial launch timeline for the remittance service.
What the partnerships do — and do not — establish
The record supports Ripple's expanding institutional footprint in South Korea, with three partnerships announced this year across distinct financial services. It does not establish that Jeonbuk's deployment or the other Korean agreements will use XRP for settlement. For now, KBank's stablecoin-based testing and any future activation of On-Demand Liquidity remain the key distinction between broader Ripple adoption and the confirmed use of XRP.