Chainlink Joins Bank-Led Project Pangea to Test Stablecoin FX Settlement

Chainlink is joining Project Pangea, a bank-led initiative that aims to use stablecoins to speed up international money transfers tied to foreign-exchange trades between Europe and South Korea. The coalition includes Qivalis, a euro stablecoin consortium backed by 37 European banks, and UniKA, a Korean banking alliance representing more than 10 commercial banks.

The development matters because the project targets one of the core frictions in cross-border finance: settlement delays. According to CoinDesk, Project Pangea is exploring a shift from the traditional T+2 settlement timeline toward near-instant T+0 settlement using regulated euro- and South Korean won-pegged stablecoins.

The initiative will test atomic payment-versus-payment settlement, a mechanism in which both sides of a currency trade settle at the same time or not at all. Supporters say that structure could reduce counterparty and settlement risk while giving businesses faster access to funds that would otherwise remain tied up during international transfers.

Project Pangea is focused on the Europe-South Korea trade corridor, which CoinDesk described as handling more than $150 billion in goods and services annually. The project also arrives as stablecoin payments continue to gain traction in Asia, where industry data cited by CoinDesk shows a large share of global stablecoin payment activity is already taking place.

Rather than requiring banks to replace their existing systems, Project Pangea is designed as middleware that works with Swift and ISO 20022 standards. Chainlink’s role is to help translate bank-initiated transaction messages into atomic swaps on the Pangea L1 Network, while the project works toward live transactions within a legal and regulatory compliance framework over the next 12 months.