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Points of Focus
- Hana Bank issued a $100-million digital bond with same-day settlement.
- The transaction is Korea’s first, but Doha Bank achieved T+0 first on D-FMI.
- Standard Chartered has now arranged or issued at least four D-FMI deals.
Hana Bank issued a $100-million, five-year digital bond through Euroclear’s blockchain platform on Sep. 18, achieving same-day settlement in what the bank called a first for a Korean financial institution using the infrastructure this way.
Standard Chartered served as sole lead manager, and Hana announced the transaction Monday.
South Korea just issued its first digital bond on blockchain
Hana Bank has issued a $100M foreign-currency bond using Euroclear’s blockchain, cutting settlement from 3–5 business days to the same day.
This is exactly the kind of real-world use case I’m watching.
Blockchain… pic.twitter.com/psiH4oSiyD
— That Martini Guy ₿ (@MartiniGuyYT) September 21, 2026
The bond settled on a T+0 basis, with allocations and payments completed the same day it was issued, compared with the three to five business days conventional foreign currency bond transactions typically require. Hana used documentation from its existing global medium-term note program rather than building a separate framework for the digital issuance.
How Hana Bank’s digital bond actually worked
The transaction ran on Euroclear’s Digital Financial Market Infrastructure, or D-FMI, which processes the issuance, registration, and settlement of securities on a distributed ledger.
D-FMI is linked to Euroclear’s conventional settlement network, meaning institutional investors can buy and trade the bond through their existing Euroclear accounts without installing separate infrastructure, a design meant to avoid creating a walled-off digital silo alongside the traditional bond market.
“The $100 million digital bond issuance and implementation of T+0 settlement represent a significant step beyond simply diversifying our funding channels, as they bring blockchain technology into the capital market,” a Hana Bank official said in the announcement.
Same-day settlement is not new to Euroclear’s platform
Hana’s transaction is a genuine first for Korea, but same-day settlement itself already has precedent on D-FMI. Standard Chartered served as sole lead manager on Doha Bank’s $150-million digital bond, which also achieved instant settlement, before Hana’s issuance.
Euroclear launched D-FMI in 2023 with a €100-million note from the World Bank’s lending arm. Issuers since then have included the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. In 2024, the platform launched the first US dollar-denominated note, and Türkiye İş Bankası’s $100-million note became the first emerging-market Eurobond issued under UK law using distributed ledger technology.
The format has also cleared a real regulatory bar rather than remaining a purely experimental exercise. The Bank of England accepted AIIB’s digitally native note as Level 2 eligible collateral upon issuance in 2024, treating it as a high-quality liquid asset on the same terms as a conventional bond.
Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations later issued the first bearer-form note under French law on the same platform, settled through Banque de France’s distributed ledger technology (DLT) solution, part of a European Central Bank trial exploring DLT for wholesale settlement in central bank money.
Standard Chartered’s recurring role as arranger
Standard Chartered’s involvement in Hana’s deal continues a pattern rather than marking a one-off engagement. The bank has acted as joint digital structurer and joint lead manager on Emirates NBD’s AED 1 billion digitally native bond, sole lead manager on Doha Bank’s issuance, and issued its $200-million digitally native notes on D-FMI in August, becoming the first global systemically important bank to do so.
With Hana Bank now added to that list, Standard Chartered has arranged or issued on D-FMI across at least four separate transactions this year and last, suggesting the more durable story is which banks are becoming the default gateway into tokenized bond issuance rather than any single deal standing out as unprecedented.
Hana’s language points toward more to come rather than a one-time initiative. The bank’s official said it would “continue to adopt advanced infrastructure and explore innovative funding solutions that meet the needs of global investors,” language consistent with a bank planning further digital issuances rather than treating this bond as a closed experiment.
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