South Korea's Largest Bank Launches JPMorgan's Kinexys Blockchain

KB Kookmin, South Korea's largest bank by assets, signed an agreement on July 26 to use JPMorgan's Kinexys blockchain platform for USD cross-border payments, becoming the first South Korean financial institution on the platform. The corporate payment service is set to launch in August, crypto.news reports.

• At launch, the service will cover USD settlements with 10 countries: South Korea, the U.S., Singapore, Saudi Arabia, India, Thailand, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and South Africa.
• The target customers are import and export companies in the semiconductor, automotive, petrochemical, and shipbuilding industries.
• Kinexys settles through JPMorgan's tokenized bank deposit accounts rather than public crypto tokens, and runs on top of the existing SWIFT network rather than replacing it — settlement happens near-instantly instead of the usual 1-3 business days.

Neither KB Kookmin nor JPMorgan has disclosed the exact August launch date, customer fees, or transaction limits yet, CryptoTimes notes. It's not the only bank experiment with blockchain rails for cross-border payments in Asia this year: earlier in July, Amazon Japan supplier AZ-COM Maruwa moved 2,300 carriers onto the JPYC stablecoin — though that settlement runs on a public stablecoin rather than a closed bank platform.

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