Blockchain infrastructure company Chainlink said it is joining a group of banks that collectively represent more than $10 trillion in assets under management to unlock real-time and stable cross-border payments for foreign exchange within a year.
The coalition, called Project Pangea, aims to redefine global foreign exchange markets, Niki Ariyasinghe, Chainlink’s vice president for Asia Pacific and the Middle East, said in a video interview on Tuesday. Besides Chainlink, the group includes Qivalis, a euro stablecoin consortium backed by 37 European banks, and UniKA, a Korean banking alliance representing more than 10 commercial banks.
The project aims to explore moving foreign exchange settlement from a traditional 48-hour time frame (T+2) to near instantaneous settlement (T+0) using regulated stablecoins linked to the Euro and South Korean Won, or crypto tokens whose value is linked 1:1 to the underlying currency.
The initiative will evaluate whether stablecoins can be exchanged through atomic payment-for-payment (PvP) settlement, in which both sides of a currency transaction settle simultaneously or not at all, thereby reducing counterparty and settlement risk.
The project goes beyond a technological experiment, Ariyasinghe said. Chainlink draws a line in the sand between theoretical “proofs of concept” and actual infrastructure.