Ripple building government bonds trading platform with $89bn South Korean insurance giant

Ripple is aiming to build on the recent popularity of XRP in South Korea by teaming up with one of the country’s big three insurance firms to provide tokenised government bond offerings.

The deal will see Ripple work with Kyobo Life Insurance, a firm with recorded total assets worth $89 billion, South Korean newspaper Maeil Kyungjae reported.

South Korea’s bond market, which includes both government and corporate bonds, is currently worth around $2.3 trillion.

Park Jin-ho, vice president of Kyobo Life Insurance, said the deal would let the firm “provide differentiated financial services” through a “close cooperation with Ripple.”

The deal comes as XRP trading volumes continue to boom in South Korea, driven largely by middle-aged traders.

Ripple’s founders developed XRP.

XRP was the most popular coin on the market-leading Upbit exchange on April 20, per CoinGecko data, accounting for over 12% of daily trading volume.

Proof of concept

Kyobo and Ripple have begun work on a proof of concept ahead of the launch of a pilot for a blockchain-powered government bond trading platform.

The firms say the platform, once live, will let traders buy and sell bonds in real-time. Using conventional bond trading solutions, transactions typically take two days to complete.

The companies struck an initial partnership deal in September. This has so far seen the firms explore a range of stablecoin and tokenised asset-related business avenues.

The new pilot will see the firms trial the platform in a testnet environment that uses Ripple’s “institutional blockchain infrastructure,” the companies said.

The companies envisage the platform converting government bonds into digital tokens that can be traded on blockchain networks.

Real-time trading

In South Korea, existing bond trading platforms use a myriad of settlement and transaction cross-referencing solutions. Transactions have to be approved by brokerages, commercial banks, and the Korea Exchange.

Ripple and Kyobo say the immutable nature of blockchain networks will help do away with this to create what they call a “real-time payment structure.”

Tim Alper is a News Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tdalper@dlnews.com.