Hana Bank issues South Korea's first digital bond on Euroclear

South Korea's second-largest bank, Hana Bank, has issued a $100 million foreign-currency bond on Euroclear's blockchain, marking the country's first blockchain-based digital bond issuance. The structure shortened settlement time to the same day, down from the usual three to five business days.

The issuance is an early concrete case of a Korean bank putting debt issuance on distributed-ledger rails, as South Korea's Financial Services Commission pushes a multi-stage plan to tokenize securities starting early next year.