South Korea's largest card issuer to use Solana for stablecoin payments

Shinhan Card, 1 of South Korea's largest recognition paper companies with 28 cardinal cardholders and astir 200 trillion won ($145 billion) successful yearly transaction volume, has officially entered into a strategical concern with the Solana Foundation.

On April 30, the 2 organizations signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate connected stablecoin outgo models and grow Web 3.0 fiscal services utilizing the Solana blockchain.

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The statement was finalized astatine Shinhan Card's office successful Seoul. The signing ceremonial featured Kim Young-il, Executive Vice President of Shinhan Card, and Lu Yin, Head of APAC for the Solana Foundation.

This collaboration marks a important determination to span accepted banking with decentralized technology.

South Korea is 1 of the world's astir crypto-active nations

South Korea is among the astir crypto-active countries connected the planet.

Over 18 cardinal South Koreans — much than a 3rd of the colonisation — are progressive successful integer assets.

Stablecoins already relationship for 47.3% of the country's full cryptocurrency outflows, with 26.87 trillion won successful stablecoin transfers recorded successful Q1 2025 alone.

In April 2026, South Korea projected its Digital Asset Basic Act, a broad crypto instrumentality with bank-style reserve rules for stablecoins, requiring 100% oregon much reserves held astatine banks oregon approved institutions.

The measure besides plans to let integer plus spot ETFs wrong 2026, pursuing the U.S. and Hong Kong. Eight of the country's apical banks are readying to motorboat a won-pegged stablecoin by year-end to trim dollar reliance.

Testing real-world outgo scenarios

Following a palmy aviator programme completed past twelvemonth — which included six abstracted proof-of-concept projects and produced a moving programmable-money astute declaration plan — Shinhan Card plans to behaviour an precocious Proof of Concept passim 2026.

This signifier volition leverage Solana's high-performance infrastructure to trial existent outgo scenarios betwixt merchants and customers connected a trial network. The extremity is to measure transaction speeds, web stability, and the wide acquisition for the extremity user.

A large portion of the probe volition absorption connected non-custodial wallets. Unlike accepted integer wallets, non-custodial versions let users to person full ownership of their integer assets without needing a middleman. Shinhan Card volition survey the infrastructure needed to connection these tools to its 28 cardinal users successful a harmless and easy-to-use format.

Creating a "hybrid" fiscal strategy

The task aims to physique a "Hybrid Finance Model" that combines the established spot of accepted concern (TradFi) with the ratio and transparency of decentralized concern (DeFi).