Hana Bank Issues $100 Million Digital Bond With Same-Day Settlement

Hana Bank has issued a $100 million digital bond through Euroclear’s blockchain-based market infrastructure, completing allocation and payment on the day of issuance in what the bank described as a first for Korea’s foreign-currency bond market.

The five-year bond was issued Friday using Euroclear’s Digital Financial Market Infrastructure, known as D-FMI. The platform uses distributed-ledger technology to handle the issuance, registration and settlement of securities. Hana Bank announced the transaction Monday.

The offering achieved T+0 settlement, meaning the bond allocation and related payments were completed on the issue date. Conventional foreign-currency bond transactions generally require three to five business days to settle. Hana Bank said the shorter process lets issuers receive funds sooner while reducing the administrative work involved in completing a deal.

The transaction was also the first time a Korean financial institution directly used Euroclear’s blockchain infrastructure to issue a digital bond. Euroclear operates as an international central securities depository and provides systems used by institutional investors and financial institutions in cross-border markets.

Hana structured the deal using documentation from its existing global medium-term note program. That approach allowed the bank to place the digital issuance within an established funding framework rather than creating a separate program for the transaction.

A key feature of the D-FMI platform is its connection to Euroclear’s conventional settlement network. Institutional investors were therefore able to purchase and trade the bond through their existing Euroclear accounts and systems, without installing separate infrastructure to participate in the digital issuance.

Standard Chartered served as the sole lead manager. It oversaw the bond’s structure, issuance and sale.

For Hana Bank, the deal extends the use of blockchain beyond an experimental record-keeping tool and into a live international funding transaction. The combination of digital issuance and same-day settlement showed how distributed-ledger infrastructure can be linked with systems already used in institutional bond markets.

A Hana Bank official said the transaction represented more than an effort to diversify the bank’s funding channels because it brought blockchain technology directly into the capital market. The bank said it plans to continue adopting advanced infrastructure and exploring funding solutions designed to meet the needs of global investors.

The issuance gives Korea’s financial sector a concrete example of how digital securities can operate alongside established cross-border market infrastructure. Its immediate practical result was a compressed settlement timetable, with the complete funding process finished on the day the bond was issued.