South Korean financial firms and crypto companies are using foreign visitor services to roll out stablecoin payments. Hana Card, Circle, and Crypto.com have launched a USDC pilot with 5% cashback.
KB Financial has completed a proof of concept for a KRW stablecoin payment flow covering issuance, offline payments, merchant settlement, and remittances. In tests using Kaia for cross-border transfers to Vietnam, settlement finished within 3 minutes and fees were cut by about 87% versus SWIFT.
Paxos's tokenized gold PAXG goes live on Solana via Sunrise DeFi, each token representing one ounce of physical gold stored in London vaults. Transaction fees drop to below $0.01, making gold accessible to millions of DeFi users.
Bitcoin held near $63,500 while altcoins outperformed. VELVET surged nearly 68% in 24 hours, AAVE climbed to its highest level in over a year, and SOL, RENDER, and SKYAI also posted strong gains.
A five-party alliance led by BNK Busan Bank tested the entire lifecycle of a KRW stablecoin on Kaia, achieving 100% success rate across four scenarios with sub-second transaction finality.
SanDisk tokenized stock ($SNDK) launches on Solana via Backpack Securities and Sunrise DeFi, offering round-the-clock trading outside US market hours.
While the US still dominates crypto investment narratives, new moves in Israel and Pakistan suggest the next phase may center on local-currency stablecoins, banking access, and real-world payment rails.
South Korean payment platform KG Inicis has signed a strategic MOU with the Solana Foundation to bring stablecoin payments to the Solana blockchain. Leveraging its annual transaction volume of over 25 trillion KRW, the partnership aims to integrate digital asset payments on-chain and introduce a token-based merchant reward system.
