Korean Giants Pioneer Blockchain-Powered Corporate Remittances, Challenging Traditional Finance

A significant collaboration among Hana Financial Group, POSCO International, and Dunamu is set to revolutionize corporate cross-border payments, signaling a major shift in the global financial landscape. The three Korean powerhouses have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop blockchain-based overseas remittance services, aiming to drastically reduce transfer times and costs for corporate clients.

This partnership strategically combines Hana Financial’s extensive foreign exchange network with POSCO International’s global trading and supply chain operations and Dunamu’s advanced blockchain technology. Dunamu, the operator of Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, will provide the underlying blockchain infrastructure, including its GIWA Chain, which is designed to handle high transaction volumes and enhance privacy.

POSCO International is slated to serve as a crucial test bed, applying the new system to its global trade operations. This initiative builds on a successful proof-of-concept project in February, where Hana Financial Group and Dunamu effectively replaced the traditional SWIFT network with GIWA Chain for cross-border remittances.

This move by leading Korean entities aligns with a broader trend in the banking sector, where institutions are increasingly adopting blockchain technology to upgrade their financial infrastructure. According to an analysis by Roland Berger, banks are slowly integrating blockchain to evolve settlement processes from batch processing to continuous synchronization. The report highlights how tokenized deposits enable real client balances to move continuously on-chain within a regulated banking environment, compressing interbank settlement times from T+1 or T+2 to near real-time. Such advancements in blockchain performance allow transactions to be executed for fractions of a cent and settled within seconds, promising unprecedented efficiency for global trade and corporate finance.