Jeonbuk Bank Drops SWIFT for Ripple Payments, XRP’s Role Left Undisclosed

Jeonbuk Bank, a regional South Korean lender, announced on Aug. 18 that it has replaced the SWIFT messaging network with Ripple Payments to handle cross-border transactions for its business customers. Ripple said the platform can settle overseas transfers in seconds to minutes, around the clock, compared with conventional SWIFT routings that can take several days.

Neither company disclosed a launch date, supported payment corridors, currencies, fees or expected transaction volumes. More notably for XRP holders, Ripple did not say whether transfers will actually settle in XRP, in its RLUSD stablecoin, in another digital asset, or purely through fiat rails — a gap that leaves the token’s direct role in this specific deployment unconfirmed.

XRP showed little reaction to the news. One outlet tracking CoinGecko data reported the token down 1.1% in the 24 hours following the announcement, underscoring that markets are not pricing this partnership as an XRP-demand catalyst absent clarity on the settlement asset.

Third Korean deal of the year

The Jeonbuk Bank agreement is Ripple’s third partnership with a South Korean financial institution in 2026. Earlier this year the San Francisco-based firm partnered with Kyobo Life Insurance to explore onchain government bond settlement and with internet-only lender Kbank on institutional wallet infrastructure.

Ripple Payments works by combining a network of payout partners and payment rails with blockchain settlement, allowing liquidity to move outside normal banking hours. The company’s Asia-Pacific infrastructure currently supports payouts in South Korean won. Ripple integrated its RLUSD stablecoin into the Ripple Payments platform in 2025, giving the firm a fiat-pegged settlement option alongside XRP.

Who the service targets

Ripple said the service is aimed at business customers such as import-export companies, technology startups and online content creators — segments that regularly move money across borders and are typically the most exposed to intermediary-bank delays and fees under the SWIFT system.

Cointelegraph said it reached out to Ripple for further details on rollout status and settlement mechanics but had not received a response as of publication, leaving the specifics of pricing, corridors and the underlying asset an open question for now.

Why it matters

For XRP holders, the headline risk is disappointment: enterprise adoption of Ripple’s payment rails does not automatically translate into on-chain XRP volume, since Ripple now offers banks a choice between XRP, RLUSD and fiat settlement. For the broader market, the deal is another data point in Ripple’s push into Asian banking infrastructure — three South Korean partnerships in a single year — even as the token’s price action so far shows the announcement alone isn’t moving the market.

Sources

• u.today
• cointelegraph.com