Hana Bank issues South Korea’s first digital bond using Euroclear’s blockchain

Hana Bank announced the issuance of a $100 million foreign-currency digital bond using Euroclear’s Digital Financial Market Infrastructure (D-FMI), marking the first time a Korean bank has directly used the international depository’s distributed-ledger infrastructure. Euroclear’s D-FMI facilitated issuance, registration and settlement on a blockchain, allowing allocations and payments to be completed on the issuance date. The bank completed the transaction under documentation from its existing global medium-term note program. The move shortened the settlement cycle from the conventional three to five business days to same-day settlement (T+0), demonstrating how tokenized securities can compress capital-markets processes. Euroclear’s D-FMI links to its broader settlement network, enabling institutional investors to participate through their current Euroclear accounts without adopting new systems. Hana Bank, which manages nearly $500 billion in client assets and ranks second in South Korea, used Standard Chartered as the sole lead manager for the transaction. The bank framed the issuance as more than a funding diversification step, saying it represents an integration of blockchain technology into capital markets and signals a willingness to adopt advanced infrastructure and investor-focused funding solutions. The issuance comes as South Korea’s Financial Services Commission prepares to introduce a comprehensive tokenized-securities framework in February 2027. Market participants and domestic banks may view Hana’s use of an established international DLT-based settlement platform as a practical route to access tokenization benefits ahead of the country’s new regulatory framework. Hana Bank and Euroclear had not immediately replied to a CoinDesk request for comment.