South Korea's Kbank — the bank behind Upbit's KRW rail — signs Ripple partnership to test cross-border payments.

Kbank, the South Korean bank that underpins Upbit's real-name KRW deposit and withdrawal system, has signed a strategic partnership with Ripple to run a blockchain-based overseas remittance proof-of-concept. CEO Choi Woo-hyung and Ripple APAC head Fiona Murray attended a signing ceremony at Kbank's Seoul headquarters, with the PoC targeting speed, cost, and transparency improvements across corridors including the UAE and Thailand.

The test is structured in phases. The first uses a separate app-based remittance flow; the second virtually links customer accounts and internal systems to stress-test whether Ripple's rails can map onto the compliance, custody, and account-linkage layers a regulated bank actually requires. That second phase also evaluates Ripple's Palisade platform — a SaaS wallet-as-a-service and custody tool aimed at institutional digital-asset operations — making this as…