Ripple announced its partnership with Jeonbuk Bank on August 18. The agreement will bring Ripple Payments to the bank’s business customers, including import-export companies, IT startups and online content creators.
Jeonbuk Bank becomes the first regional bank in Korea to deploy the payment service. The target is straightforward: cross-border payments that settle in seconds to minutes and remain available 24 hours a day.
Businesses that import goods, pay overseas suppliers or receive revenue from abroad often depend on correspondent banking. A payment can pass through several intermediary banks before it reaches its destination, adding processing time, fees and uncertainty around its arrival.
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…
— Ripple (@Ripple) August 18, 2026
Ripple says its platform gives Jeonbuk Bank a different route for those transfers. The bank will offer near real-time settlement to business customers, with payments running around the clock instead of relying only on banking hours.
The deal is aimed at companies with regular international payment needs. Importers and exporters need to pay suppliers and receive invoices across borders. Startups may pay remote workers, cloud-service providers or overseas partners. Online creators can receive income from global platforms and advertisers.
Fiona Murray, Ripple’s managing director for Asia Pacific, said:
“Regional banks play a vital role in the real economy.”
Ripple Payments is designed to handle the operational work around cross-border transfers through one service. The official announcement highlights three changes for Jeonbuk’s business clients:
The announcement does not publish the first payment corridors, fees, supported currencies or a customer rollout date. Those details will determine which Jeonbuk clients can use the service and how it compares with existing bank-remittance products.
Jeonbuk Bank President Park Choon-won called the partnership a step in the lender’s digital-finance strategy.
“This partnership will become a new growth engine for the bank.”
Ripple’s announcement does not identify the asset or currency used to settle Jeonbuk Bank’s transfers.
That leaves three possibilities open. The payment flows could use XRP, Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, or a fiat and stablecoin arrangement selected for each corridor. Ripple has not confirmed any of them.
The distinction matters because a bank adopting Ripple Payments does not automatically establish new transaction demand for XRP. It also does not confirm that RLUSD will serve as the settlement asset.
The partnership confirms the payment platform and its target users. The settlement mechanism remains undisclosed.
Jeonbuk Bank is Ripple’s third Korean institutional partnership announced in 2026.
Earlier deals covered different parts of the digital-asset stack:
Ripple has also expanded its regulated presence outside Korea. Ripple Payments Europe was added to ESMA’s MiCA register after receiving authorisation in Luxembourg. In Japan, RLUSD became the first foreign stablecoin approved under a new regulatory category.
Jeonbuk’s future announcements need to answer four practical questions: which countries the service will cover, which currencies it will support, when customers can access it and which asset settles each transfer.
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