As Visa begins pilot service for an integrated platform supporting the issuance, remittance, and custody of Open USD (OUSD), a global joint dollar stablecoin, some point to the need for Korea to expedite related legislation.
According to the financial sector on the 20th, Visa unveiled the "Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP)," an integrated infrastructure that supports financial institutions in issuing, burning, storing, and remitting stablecoins. As its first supported asset, it adopted OUSD, which Open Standard recently unveiled. OUSD is a dollar stablecoin issued with the participation of around 140 global companies including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google, and Coinbase. In Korea, Samsung Electronics and Shinhan Financial Group are among the participants.
While Visa is accelerating its global infrastructure development, Korea still lags behind as the Digital Asset Basic Act has not been enacted. The Credit Finance Association, which is currently conducting a proof of concept (PoC) for stablecoin card network payments, is working only with won-denominated coins.
Domestic card companies are also participating in the OUSD consortium, but they were excluded from the verification because standards for the domestic circulation of overseas-issued stablecoins and their supervisory framework have not yet been established. This PoC is a demonstration to establish stablecoin payment standards for domestic card companies, including QR-based simple payments, anti-money laundering (AML), and fraud detection systems (FDS). An official in the card industry explained, "In a situation where it is uncertain whether overseas-issued stablecoins can even be circulated in Korea, we could not verify this in the PoC."
Meanwhile, the ruling party and government decided on the same day to accelerate discussions on the Digital Asset Act, which is centered on the introduction of a won-denominated stablecoin. The ruling Democratic Party of Korea reaffirmed this policy through a closed-door briefing by the Financial Services Commission. Rep. Park Sang-hyuk, the ruling party's chief negotiator, met with reporters immediately after the briefing and said, "Regarding the Digital Asset Basic Act, several lawmakers have introduced bills and there is much interest." He added, "Because market forecasts differ on the effects of the U.S. GENIUS Act taking effect next year, there was a general view that the government should quickly prepare (the Digital Asset Basic Act) legislatively, and we decided to begin discussions."
However, in the market, there are considerable skeptical views on whether the Digital Asset Act can be completed within the year despite the ruling party and government's policy. An official in the cryptocurrency industry urged, "The government must first quickly unveil its own bill."
