Bank of Korea advances to live CBDC transactions with nine banks in September
Key points
- The Bank of Korea's second-phase CBDC pilot is scheduled for September and will involve real transactions across nine commercial banks, including KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori Financial Group, Gyeongnam Bank, and iM Bank.
- BOK will supply the core infrastructure while each participating bank issues and manages its own deposit tokens, a model a BOK official described as laying groundwork for commercialisation.
- Hana Bank is separately constructing won-backed stablecoin infrastructure covering issuance, redemption, settlement, wallets, and AML controls, ahead of expected legislation.
- South Korea's Ministry of Economy and Finance has announced plans to amend its national asset law to classify cryptocurrencies as national assets, extending the country's broader blockchain-in-public-finance agenda.
- The U.S. Senate passed a bill including a four-year CBDC ban last month, but President Trump has deferred signing it, creating a sharp policy divergence with South Korea's accelerating programme.
The Bank of Korea (BOK) is moving its central bank digital currency programme into a second phase in September, expanding real-transaction testing to nine commercial banks. The infrastructure will be BOK-owned, while participating institutions issue and manage their own deposit tokens under that umbrella. Named participants include Gyeongnam Bank, iM Bank, and the country’s three largest lenders: KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, and Woori Financial Group.
A BOK official described the second phase explicitly as groundwork for commercialisation, a meaningful step beyond the exploratory framing typical of earlier pilots. The stated objective is a frictionless won trading environment unconstrained by time or geography, language that suggests the programme is oriented toward retail accessibility rather than wholesale interbank settlement alone.
The announcement lands inside a broader South Korean digital-currency push. Hana Bank is already building stablecoin infrastructure covering issuance, redemption, settlement, digital wallets, and anti-money laundering controls, though without a commitment to issue. Separately, the Ministry of Economy and Finance has announced plans to revise national asset law to classify cryptocurrencies as national assets. BOK Governor Shin Hyun-son, appointed in April, made CBDC and deposit tokens a stated priority in his first address.
The global CBDC landscape remains sparse: only the Bahamas (2020), Nigeria (2021), and Jamaica (2022) have fully launched retail CBDCs, while the Atlantic Council tracker records 41 countries in testing. The United States Senate passed legislation containing a four-year CBDC ban last month, though President Donald Trump has not yet signed it into law, leaving South Korea’s acceleration in notable contrast to the direction of the world’s largest capital market.
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