XRP sinks below $1 for first time since 2024 as Korean bank adopts Ripple Payments
XRP's price has fallen below $1 despite Ripple securing a new partnership with South Korea's Jeonbuk Bank for cross-border payments. The disconnect between institutional adoption and token price performance remains a notable trend for the asset.
Why it matters
This highlights the complex relationship between institutional utility of blockchain infrastructure and the speculative market value of associated tokens.
The slide came as Ripple, the payments company closely associated with XRP, announced its third Korean partnership of the year, with Jeonbuk Bank becoming the first regional bank in the country to deploy Ripple Payments for cross-border transfers.
That followed custody and wallet infrastructure deals with Kyobo Life Insurance and Kbank earlier in 2026. Jeonbuk Bank was founded in 1969 in Jeonju, in Korea's south-west, and is the dominant lender in its home province.
In a release shared with CoinDesk, Ripple describes the service as delivering near real-time stablecoin cross-border settlement, without specifying which asset moves the money.
Bank transfers today hop between intermediary banks over the SWIFT messaging network and can take days to arrive. Ripple says its route settles in seconds to minutes and runs around the clock, which the bank will offer to business customers including importers, exporters, IT startups and online content creators.
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