Chainlink Teams Up With 47 Banks to Upgrade International Transfer Infrastructure

Here’s a final refined rewrite with a slightly tighter, more publication-ready tone:

Project Pangea aims to use stablecoins to settle multimillion-dollar FX transactions between Europe and South Korea in near real time.

Chainlink said it has joined a banking consortium representing more than $10 trillion in assets, targeting real-time, stablecoin-based cross-border FX settlement within the next year.

According to Niki Ariyasinghe, Chainlink’s vice president for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, the initiative is intended to modernize global FX infrastructure. Alongside Chainlink, participants include Qivalis, a euro stablecoin consortium backed by 37 European banks, and UniKA, a Korean banking alliance comprising more than 10 commercial lenders.

The project seeks to replace the traditional T+2 settlement cycle with near-instant T+0 settlement using regulated euro- and Korean won–pegged stablecoins, each maintaining a 1:1 peg with its underlying currency.

A key focus is atomic payment-versus-payment (PvP) settlement, where both sides of a trade settle simultaneously or not at all, reducing counterparty and settlement risk.

Ariyasinghe stressed that the effort is focused on production deployment rather than experimentation.

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

The initiative targets the Europe–South Korea trade corridor, which processes over $150 billion in annual flows. It also reflects broader trends, with Asia accounting for roughly 60% of global stablecoin transaction activity.

Ariyasinghe said this highlights strong underlying demand in regions where traditional financial systems are less efficient and tokenized cash is filling operational gaps.

Rather than replacing legacy rails, Project Pangea is designed as a middleware layer. Banks initiate transactions via SWIFT, while Chainlink’s infrastructure converts those messages into atomic settlement instructions on the Pangea L1 Network.

The system is built to integrate with SWIFT and ISO 20022 standards, enabling banks to connect to blockchain-based settlement rails without overhauling existing infrastructure.

While some observers see overlap with Ripple’s cross-border payments strategy, Chainlink framed the initiative as complementary rather than competitive.

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

Ultimately, the goal is to reduce the time capital remains locked in transit.

“If money is stuck for days, it can’t be used,” he said. “Reducing that delay is clearly beneficial for users.”

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