Ripple, Kyobo Life Insurance partner to enable tokenized government bond settlement in South Korea

Ripple has partnered with South Korean Kyobo Life Insurance to enable tokenized government bond transactions through Ripple Custody.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Ripple said that the pair plans to utilize its custody platform for holding, transferring, and settling tokenized assets, aiming to replace manual bond settlement processes.

Ripple noted that its technology can shorten settlement cycles from the typical two-day window to near real-time execution, which could reduce counterparty risk and improve capital efficiency. 

The company also plans to explore stablecoin-based payment rails with Kyobo, which would allow round-the-clock transactions, according to the statement.

"This partnership is a signal to the broader market that institutional-grade digital asset infrastructure is no longer a future aspiration; it is available, proven, and ready to deploy in Korea today," said Fiona Murray, managing director for Asia Pacific at Ripple.

APAC expansion

Ripple has been actively expanding its presence in APAC. In March, Ripple announced that it was acquiring BC Payments to secure an Australian Financial Services License.

Last month, Ripple also joined the Singapore central bank's BLOOM initiative to pilot programmable cross-border trade settlements using XRP Ledger and its dollar-pegged stablecoin RLUSD.

Additionally, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has added support for XRP (XRP) on its Rakuten Wallet platform. On Wednesday, the company launched XRP as both a listed asset and a payment method, allowing users to purchase the cryptocurrency with Rakuten Points and fund Rakuten Cash balances with XRP for use at merchants across Japan.

XRP traded down 1.4% over the past 24 hours to $1.36, according to The Block's XRP price page. It remains the fifth-largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of around $83.3 billion.