Blockchain infrastructure company Chainlink has announced that it will join a group of banks with over $10 trillion in assets under management to enable real-time, stablecoin-based cross-border payments for foreign exchange transactions within a year.
The coalition, called Project Pangea, aims to redefine the global foreign exchange market, Niki Ariyasinghe, Chainlink’s vice president for Asia Pacific and the Middle East, said in a video interview on Tuesday. In addition to Chainlink, the group includes Qivalis, a Eurostablecoin consortium backed by 37 European banks, and UniKA, a Korean banking alliance representing more than 10 commercial banks.
The project aims to consider moving foreign exchange settlements from traditional 48-hour (T+2) timelines to near-instantaneous (T+0) settlements using regulated euro- and Korean won-pegged stablecoins, i.e. cryptographic tokens whose value is tied 1:1 to the underlying currency.
This initiative will evaluate whether stablecoins can be exchanged through atomic payment-to-payment (PvP) payments. In PvP payments, both sides of a currency transaction settle at the same time or not at all, thereby reducing counterparty and settlement risk.
Aryasinghe said the project is more than just a technology experiment. Chainlink draws a line between theoretical “proof of concept” and real infrastructure.