An Altcoin Has Partnered with 47 Banks for International Payments – Is Ripple’s Dominance Under Threat?

Blockchain infrastructure company Chainlink (LINK) announced it has partnered with 47 South Korean and European banks to enable real-time, stablecoin-based cross-border payments in international currency transactions.

The initiative, called Project Pangea, brings together banks representing over $10 trillion in assets in total. Besides Chainlink, the project includes Qivalis, a euro stablecoin consortium supported by 37 European banks, and UniKA, a South Korean banking alliance representing more than 10 commercial banks.

Chainlink’s Vice President for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, Niki Ariyasinghe, stated today that Project Pangea aims to redefine global currency markets. The project’s goal is to make currency swap settlement, which traditionally takes two business days, virtually instantaneous through regulated stablecoins pegged to the euro and the South Korean won.

The initiative will evaluate whether stablecoins can be exchanged using an “atomic payment-versus-payment” method. In this method, both sides of the currency transaction occur simultaneously, or the transaction does not occur at all. This reduces counterparty risk and settlement risk.

Ariyasinghe stated that Project Pangea is not just a technology trial, and the goal is to begin live operations within the next 12 months, in compliance with legal and regulatory frameworks.

“This isn’t just a proof-of-concept study. Everyone knows what they’re doing. The appetite is largely focused on building real infrastructure. The goal is to conduct live operations within the next 12 months, in line with legal and regulatory compliance,” he said.

The project will initially focus on the trade corridor between Europe and South Korea. This route is considered one of the world’s top 15 trade routes, with over $150 billion in goods and services trade annually. Furthermore, industry data shows that 60% of global stablecoin payments occur in Asia, further highlighting the region’s importance in this area.

Project Pangea aims to connect traditional financial institutions to a blockchain-based consensus infrastructure without requiring them to completely change their existing systems. European banks will initiate transactions via Swift, the global messaging network used since the 1970s. The Chainlink infrastructure will then convert these commands into instantaneous atomic swap transactions on a standalone ledger called the Pangea L1 Network.

The project is designed to work in compliance with Swift and ISO 20022 banking standards. This will allow traditional financial institutions to access blockchain-based consensus systems without changing their existing payment infrastructure.

Chainlink argues that the initiative should not be seen as a direct competitor to Ripple’s work in the corporate cross-border payments space. Ariyasinghe stated that Chainlink is more of a technology provider in this project, and their goal is not to build a single network from scratch, but to apply the technology to areas where it can create value.

*This is not investment advice.