As Visa pilots an integrated infrastructure supporting Open USD (OUSD), a global dollar stablecoin, calls are growing in Korea to accelerate the establishment of a stablecoin regulatory framework.
According to the financial industry on the 21st, Visa has unveiled the Visa Stablecoin Platform (VSP), which supports financial institutions in issuing and redeeming stablecoins as well as handling custody and transfers. The platform's first supported asset is OUSD, recently unveiled by the global consortium Open Standard. OUSD is a dollar-based stablecoin involving more than 140 companies, including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Google, and Coinbase. In Korea, Samsung Electronics and Shinhan Financial Group are among the consortium members.
Unlike global payment companies such as Visa that are accelerating the expansion of stablecoin infrastructure, concerns are being raised that Korea's response is falling behind due to delays in establishing related regulations. The stablecoin card payment proof-of-concept (PoC) currently being pursued by the Credit Finance Association is also targeting only won-based stablecoins.
Korean card companies are participating in the OUSD project, but they were excluded from this pilot because standards for the domestic circulation of overseas-issued stablecoins and a supervisory framework have not been established. This PoC is aimed at creating stablecoin payment standards for the card industry, including QR-based simple payments, anti-money laundering (AML), and fraud detection systems (FDS). "Since it has not even been institutionally determined whether overseas stablecoins can circulate domestically, it was difficult to include them in this verification," a card industry official said.
In response, the political sphere is also beginning to intensify related legislative discussions. The ruling party and government agreed the previous day, through a closed-door briefing session at the Financial Services Commission, to accelerate the push for the Digital Asset Basic Act, whose core content is the introduction of a won-based stablecoin. In a briefing, Park Sang-hyuk, secretary of the Democratic Party, said, "Interest is high, as many lawmakers have proposed the Digital Asset Basic Act." He added, "A consensus has formed that the government should also hasten legislative preparations, considering the market impact of the implementation of the U.S. GENIUS Act, and we have decided to continue related discussions."
However, many in the industry also forecast that actual legislation could take considerable time. "The priority is to disclose the government's proposal promptly to create a predictable environment for the market," an industry official said.
