Shinhan, Visa to test stablecoin payment rails in Korea

On Aug. 26, 2026 Shinhan Financial Group signed a strategic agreement with Visa to test and design stablecoin payment infrastructure for South Korea. The companies will use Visa’s institutional stablecoin platform to verify issuance, transfers and redemption as part of a technical validation phase rather than a commercial launch.

Shinhan will run end-to-end tests of the token lifecycle — minting, transfer and redemption — on Visa’s platform and co-develop services that meet domestic financial and regulatory requirements. Planned pilots will explore using stablecoins in card payment settlement, develop AI-based payment models and expand business-to-business and business-to-consumer payment services.

A key workstream is tokenised card settlement. The partners plan pilots that link Shinhan Bank, Shinhan Card and Jeju Bank with Visa’s global payments network and digital technology to test whether tokenised settlement can shorten the multi-day clearing cycle between a card transaction and funds reaching merchants.

Visa’s platform provides a managed environment that lets banks and fintechs mint, move and manage tokens without building the underlying infrastructure. Shinhan will use the platform as a testbed for operational, compliance and technical scenarios before any onshore issuance.

Shinhan has carried out several blockchain proofs of concept. Shinhan Card partnered with the Solana Foundation in April 2026 to test payment flows on Solana’s testnet and the group completed multiple earlier pilots. The group joined the Open Standard consortium in July with other Korean firms. Shinhan Card serves about 28 million cardholders and reports roughly 200 trillion won in annual transaction volume. Shinhan Financial Group posted net income of 1.82 trillion won, about $1.3 billion, in its most recent quarter.

South Korea is finalising the Digital Asset Basic Act. Shinhan has said it will await the law’s direction before moving to commercial deployment. Regulators are discussing a provision that would allow banks to hold controlling stakes in won-denominated stablecoin issuers, which would change whether banks can issue tokens rather than only distribute them.

More than 18 million people in Korea are active in digital assets. Korean exchanges recorded 18 consecutive months of net stablecoin outflows through June, totaling about $10.4 billion, as traders used offshore dollar tokens to access products not available domestically.

Jin Ok-dong, chief executive of Shinhan Financial Group, commented: “Through this agreement, we have expanded our long-standing partnership with Visa to the broader digital finance sector.”