Chainlink pulls 50 banks into a plan to settle currency trades instantly

@chainlink has unveiled Project Pangea, a cross-border foreign exchange initiative that draws together more than 50 financial institutions across Europe and South Korea in a bid to replace the traditional two-day currency settlement cycle with near-instant, blockchain-based transactions.

Who Is Involved and What They Are Building

The coalition brings together Chainlink, FairSquareLab, UniKA (Unified Korea Alliance), whose steering committee includes Shinhan Bank, JB Bank, Kbank, FairSquareLab and OBDIA along with more than 10 participating Korean commercial banks, and Qivalis, a euro stablecoin consortium powered by 37 leading European banks. The banks collectively represent over $10 trillion in assets under management.

The initiative is designed to unlock the direct, atomic swap of regulated, fiat-referenced digital assets, including euro and Korean won stablecoins, by leveraging Chainlink's data, interoperability and orchestration standards alongside FairSquareLab's onchain FX settlement technology.

The project aims to move foreign exchange settlement from a traditional 48-hour (T+2) timeline toward near-instant (T+0) settlement using regulated euro- and South Korean won-pegged stablecoins. The initiative will evaluate whether the stablecoins can be exchanged through atomic payment-versus-payment (PvP) settlement, in which both sides of a currency trade settle simultaneously or not at all, thereby reducing counterparty and settlement risk.

How the Technology Works, and Why the Corridor Matters

Rather than forcing legacy financial institutions to overhaul their systems, Project Pangea intends to act as a middleware translator. Banks will trigger transactions using Swift, and Chainlink's infrastructure will translate those commands into instant atomic swaps on a neutral, independent ledger called the Pangea L1 Network. This enables existing financial systems to connect to public and private blockchain networks using the same ISO 20022 messaging standards and infrastructure they have used for decades.

The initiative is focusing on the trade corridor between Europe and South Korea, an economic artery that processes over $150 billion in goods and services annually, making it one of the world's 15 largest trade routes. Chainlink's vice president for Asia-Pacific, Niki Ariyasinghe, said the goal is not a proof of concept. The target is live transactions within a legal, regulatory compliance framework within the next 12 months.

Qivalis, the Amsterdam-based euro stablecoin consortium, is led by former Coinbase Germany executive Jan-Oliver Sell and is anticipated to launch in the second half of 2026 as Europe's answer to dominant US dollar stablecoins. The global FX market processes over $9.6 trillion in daily trading volume, and yet the traditional banking system faces major bottlenecks due to existing market infrastructure and fragmented market structure. Project Pangea is positioned as a direct response to those inefficiencies.

Sources
Chainlink and Multinational Banking Consortia Launch Project Pangea (PR Newswire)
Chainlink Teams Up With 47 South Korean, European Banks (CoinDesk)
Chainlink, Korean and European Banks Launch Project Pangea (Crypto Briefing)