Hana Financial Group, POSCO International, and Dunamu, operator of South Korea's largest licensed crypto exchange Upbit, signed a memorandum of understanding on April 29 at Hana Financial's Seoul headquarters to build a blockchain-based cross-border remittance platform. The agreement puts POSCO's roughly 40,000 annual overseas payment transactions, spread across a 51-country supply chain, onto Dunamu's GIWA Chain, a proprietary Layer 2 network built on Optimism's OP Stack. The three parties are targeting a commercially operational platform before the end of 2026.

Under the arrangement, each party fills a distinct role. Hana Financial contributes its foreign exchange network, payment processing infrastructure, and settlement capabilities. POSCO International supplies a ready-made, high-volume stream of real-world corporate payments spanning steel, energy, agricultural commodities, battery minerals, and biomaterials. Dunamu provides GIWA Chain as the underlying rails, recording transactions on-chain. The structure makes this one of the largest disclosed enterprise blockchain remittance pilots by transaction volume anywhere.

The partnership did not start from scratch. Hana Financial and Dunamu signed a bilateral MOU in 2025, establishing the foundation for their collaboration, and the April 29 three-party agreement represents the third step in a documented sequential buildout. The two companies then completed a bilateral proof of concept on February 27, 2026, replacing the SWIFT messaging layer between Hana Bank's Seoul headquarters and its overseas branches with GIWA Chain. That test reported significantly reduced remittance fees and significantly shortened settlement times by cutting out the multi-step correspondent banking chain that SWIFT-based transfers typically require. A standard SWIFT transfer of roughly 1 million Korean won, about $750, can carry total fees of around 35,000 won (approximately $26) once cable charges, bank commissions, and intermediary costs are factored in. The PoC indicated GIWA Chain can substantially reduce that load, though the parties have not published specific figures. The next planned step is a deposit token model, where customer funds are converted into blockchain-native digital tokens that move directly between remittance channels without the delays of legacy settlement systems.

GIWA Chain launched in public awareness at the Upbit Developer Conference in September 2025. It is built on Optimism's OP Stack, an optimistic rollup architecture that processes transactions off the main Ethereum chain and posts transaction data back to the main chain, where it is subject to a fraud-proof challenge window rather than relying on cryptographic validity proofs. A separate privacy layer, called the BOJAGI Protocol, uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify transactions without exposing the underlying financial data, which matters for corporate clients with confidentiality requirements. The network runs one-second block times and is fully compatible with Ethereum's standard developer tooling. During its testnet phase, GIWA Sepolia generated more than 4 million blocks. Formal mainnet confirmation had not been announced as of the September 2025 UDC reveal; by February 2026, however, the network was operationally active enough to underpin the bilateral proof of concept with Hana Financial, indicating meaningful readiness ahead of the April 29 MOU signing. Dunamu has positioned GIWA Chain as a Korean-native alternative to networks like Coinbase's Base and Binance's BNB Chain.

Hana Financial Vice Chairman Lee Eun-hyung described the agreement as "an important turning point in combining digital assets, traditional industry and finance," and said the group aims "to commercialize the service and deliver tangible value to the market." POSCO International President Lee Kye-in said the partnership "lays the groundwork for a mid- to long-term partnership with leading South Korean companies in digital finance." Dunamu CEO Oh Kyoung-suk said GIWA Chain's technology would "serve as a foundation for a more efficient and transparent on-chain financial environment."

The geographic footprint of POSCO International's operations gives this platform immediate cross-regional relevance. The company runs more than 80 offices in 43 countries where it maintains a physical presence, a footprint that sits within a broader 51-country supply chain. Active operations span South and Southeast Asia (Pakistan, Indonesia), Africa (Kenya, South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Madagascar), and the Middle East, including Dubai. Counterparties in these markets currently navigate the same correspondent banking delays and fee layers that the GIWA Chain platform is designed to significantly reduce. Corporate trading partners in higher-cost corridors stand to benefit most directly, even if they engage passively as POSCO routes payments through the on-chain system and transaction records settle on-chain.

This agreement arrives during a concentrated stretch of activity in Korean financial infrastructure. Just two days earlier, on April 27, K Bank, an internet-only lender in which Dunamu holds a major stake through its Upbit business, announced a separate pilot with Ripple to test on-chain remittances toward the UAE and Thailand using Ripple's Palisade platform. Both initiatives follow South Korea's January 2026 remittance deregulation, which removed the designated-bank monopoly on overseas transfers and standardized the threshold for documentation-free remittances at $100,000 annually across all financial institution types. South Korea's Financial Services Commission had targeted Q1 2026 for Phase 2 digital asset legislation and is separately running a government pilot for blockchain-based subsidy payments covering electric vehicle charging infrastructure, with an H1 2026 timeline.

Success at corporate scale would validate GIWA Chain for institutional use cases beyond remittances, including trade finance and commodity settlement. Dunamu's NODIT subsidiary, which provides blockchain integration services, is positioned as the likely vehicle for attracting external developers across Southeast Asia and other regional markets as the network matures.