MoonPay targets won stablecoins as it expands into South Korea

MoonPay has launched MoonPay Korea and plans to use the country as a base for its Asian business, with partnerships covering won stablecoins, cross border payments, remittances and digital asset infrastructure.

According to Maeil Business Newspaper, MoonPay unveiled the strategy at an official launch event in Seoul on Sept. 29, where the company detailed work with Woori Bank, KB Financial Group, KakaoBank and financial technology company Finger. MoonPay plans to test services with the Korean companies before connecting them to its international payment and digital asset network.

MoonPay co founder and Asia Pacific CEO Lee Boo gun said Korea combines strong demand for virtual assets with developed digital payment infrastructure, creating an opportunity to build new financial services and improve existing payment systems.

“Korea has an opportunity to develop new financial services and increase the efficiency of existing services because it has both demand for virtual assets and digital payment infrastructure,” Lee said.

MoonPay is focusing its Korean operation on cooperation between financial companies and digital platforms, cross border movement of funds and using services developed in Korea in other Asian markets.

A central part of the plan involves creating overseas distribution channels for Korean won stablecoins if such assets are issued under the country’s developing regulatory framework.

MoonPay Korea targets overseas use of won stablecoins

MoonPay expects its global network to give Korean won stablecoins access to users outside the country, including overseas Koreans, international students and tourists.

Under the proposed model, users could buy and hold won stablecoins abroad, convert them into other currencies or digital assets and use them for payments and settlements.

Lee identified overseas remittances, payments by foreigners in Korea, trade transactions and corporate payments as potential uses.

“It is also an important task to secure overseas distribution channels for the success of won stablecoins,” he said.

The plan arrives as Korean financial companies are already testing many of the services MoonPay wants to connect to its international network. As crypto.news previously reported, KB Financial tested won stablecoin payments in May, covering issuance, offline QR payments, merchant settlement and an overseas remittance to Vietnam.

The Vietnam test converted a won stablecoin into a dollar stablecoin through onchain liquidity before transferring the funds to a Vietnamese bank account. The transaction took less than three minutes, while reported fees were roughly 87% lower than a conventional SWIFT based transfer.

KB is now among the financial groups MoonPay plans to work with directly. KB Kookmin Bank will examine on and off ramp infrastructure, wallets, stablecoin issuance and distribution, and overseas remittance and settlement services with MoonPay.

KB Kookmin Card will focus on payments. The companies plan to test a model that would let foreign visitors use digital assets such as stablecoins at Korean merchants, with proof of concept work examining system connectivity, safety, convenience and commercial feasibility.

MoonPay plans direct links with Korean banking systems

MoonPay is calling its implementation strategy “Full Stack Last Mile,” under which the company intends to connect its services directly with existing Korean financial infrastructure instead of limiting its role to providing APIs and software development kits.

The system is intended to cover the final stages of a transaction, including won deposits and withdrawals, payments, settlements, merchant settlement, refunds and error processing.

“We will not only provide APIs and SDKs, but also support the process of applying and operating products to the existing financial system,” Lee said.

MoonPay plans to pursue the licenses needed for its Korean operations, including virtual asset service provider registration. Services involving won deposits and withdrawals would need to meet domestic requirements such as real name verified accounts.

Customer identification, payments, settlements and customer protection duties would be divided between MoonPay and its Korean financial partners. Systems would then be adapted to local security and operating standards.

Finger is expected to provide part of the technical connection between MoonPay and Korean financial institutions. MoonPay plans to connect its wallet, conversion and payment APIs and wallet as a service technology to domestic bank and card systems.

The setup would incorporate Korean financial industry requirements covering anti money laundering controls, customer identification, abnormal transaction detection, access management, security reviews and responses to system failures.

MoonPay has been building a similar institutional infrastructure outside Korea. In May, the company launched MoonPay Trade as an execution platform for banks, fintech companies and enterprises, giving clients access to tokenized assets, stablecoin liquidity and decentralized finance across more than 200 blockchain networks.

Woori and KakaoBank test cross border payment models

Woori Bank’s role will focus on combining its won based financial infrastructure with MoonPay’s international distribution and payment network.

If won stablecoins are issued, MoonPay plans to connect its wallet and on and off ramp network so overseas Koreans, students and tourists can acquire, hold and exchange the assets outside Korea.

The two companies plan to test business to business payments as well. Woori’s remittance infrastructure would be combined with MoonPay’s digital asset network to examine overseas payments by Korean companies and payments into Korea by foreign businesses.

Woori would handle identity verification for services involving foreign users, while MoonPay is reviewing how its authentication, conversion and payment technology could fit into the process.

The bank already has links to Korea’s developing won stablecoin market. BDACS’ KRW1 stablecoin is backed 1:1 by Korean won held at Woori Bank, while the project recently adopted LayerZero infrastructure to support transfers across multiple blockchain networks.

KakaoBank is working with MoonPay on a different cross border remittance structure designed to connect a Korean remittance application with overseas bank accounts in one transaction flow.

Under an example presented by MoonPay Korea strategy director Choi Han kyul, KakaoBank would process a student’s remittance application, screening, currency exchange and transmission in Korea. MoonPay would receive digital assets overseas, convert them into dollars and deposit the money into a local US bank account.

“We aim to process within an hour,” Choi said.

KakaoBank is considering services involving trading, custody and swaps between stablecoins denominated in currencies including the Korean won, US dollar and Japanese yen. Cooperation could later cover other Kakao companies such as Kakao Pay.

KakaoBank and Kakao Pay have separately signed a Fireblocks agreement to test stablecoin infrastructure, regulatory requirements, security systems and digital asset services in Korea.

Korean stablecoin rules remain under development

MoonPay’s plans are being prepared before South Korea has completed its second stage digital asset legislation.

The Financial Services Commission expects the Digital Asset Framework Act review to reach a National Assembly bill review subcommittee in November. Stablecoin rules remain part of the legislation, including questions over who can issue won denominated tokens and how issuers should be supervised.

The Bank of Korea has favored an initial model led by regulated banks, arguing that won stablecoins could affect monetary policy, payment systems and financial stability.

MoonPay is preparing its Korean operation while those rules are still being developed. The company said it has processed more than $120 billion in cumulative transactions, serves more than 32 million verified users and works with over 1,500 partners. Its network supports more than 120 fiat currencies and 170 payment methods across more than 180 service areas.

The company is expanding its institutional services into wallet and key management, custody, cross chain transactions, over the counter trading, DeFi liquidity and stablecoin issuance and payments.

MoonPay said its tokenized fund infrastructure connects with more than 7,500 wallets and applications, allowing investors to subscribe to and redeem tokenized funds around the clock using stablecoins.

At the Seoul event, MoonPay Chief Legal Officer Caroline Pham described the company as an “operating system of value” covering funding, tokenization, trading and spending through services including on and off ramps, virtual accounts, white label stablecoin issuance, wallets, cross chain transactions and settlement.

MoonPay presented AI agent payments as another business line and demonstrated its PayBox payment infrastructure during the event. In the demonstration, a user instructed an AI agent to find a flight from Seoul to Singapore after reviewing an asset portfolio. The agent paid $0.10 for an external search service before returning flight and pricing information.

“If Click executed transactions in the 2000s and API executed transactions in the 2010s, now AI agents are entrusted with user authority to trade,” Pham said.