Ripple signed Jeonbuk Bank as Korea's first regional Ripple Payments client, but neither party disclosed XRP as the settlement asset. KB Financial settled a Vietnam remittance in under 3 minutes at 87% lower cost using stablecoin-to-stablecoin conversion, directly competing with XRP's bridge function. Every Korean payment pilot so far has paired with Kaia, Circle, or Solana, leaving the XRP Ledger without a single Korean won stablecoin partner.
Don't wait: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just revealed his top 10 AI stocks. See the full list FREE now. Ripple announced an agreement with Jeonbuk Bank in Seoul on August 18, making it the first regional lender in Korea to deploy Ripple Payments.
Jeonbuk's business customers had been sending money over SWIFT, which is the messaging network banks have used for cross-border transfers since the 1970s, but a payment can take days. Meanwhile, Ripple Payments clears in seconds and runs around the clock. Despite the news, the XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) price fell on the same day.
The token slipped to 98 cents in Asian trading hours, its lowest since November 2024, before recovering to $1.01. Will the Jeonbuk deal do anything for XRP? Jeonbuk Bank will use Ripple Payments for cross-border remittances on behalf of its business customers, which Ripple lists as import-export companies, IT startups and online content creators.
Those are firms that have been sending money through correspondent banking, where a payment hops between intermediary banks and takes days to arrive. Founded in 1969 in Jeonju, Jeonbuk is the dominant lender in North Jeolla Province and part of JB Financial Group. Ripple's other two Korean clients, Kyobo Life Insurance and Kbank, both operate nationwide, so Jeonbuk is its first customer here whose own customers are concentrated in one region.
Fiona Murray, Managing Director for Asia Pacific at Ripple, framed that as the point in Ripple's announcement. "Regional banks play a vital role in the real economy," she said. "As the first regional bank in Korea to deploy Ripple Payments, Jeonbuk Bank is extending near real-time cross-border settlement directly to the businesses it serves." Jeonbuk is Ripple's third Korean agreement of 2026.
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