Shinhan and SBI test yen stablecoins for tourists in Korea

Japanese tourists in South Korea may one day pay at shops with yen stablecoins linked to their cards, under a new collaboration between Korean card issuer Shinhan Card and two subsidiaries of Japan's SBI Holdings. The partners are SBI VC Trade, a crypto exchange, and SBI XDC Network APAC, a trade-finance blockchain company, according to an SBI Holdings statement reported by CoinDesk.

What the partners will test

• Card-linked merchant payments: a Japanese visitor pays a Korean merchant, with a yen stablecoin settling in the background.
• Peer-to-peer wallet transfers between users in the two countries.
• Trade settlement: using stablecoins to pay cross-border invoices between companies.
• Compliance tooling: systems to flag suspicious transactions and meet anti-money-laundering rules.

How it would work in practice

The tourist case is the most visible. Today a Japanese visitor's card payment in Seoul goes through card networks and currency conversion, with fees at each step. If the yen leg is a stablecoin — a token that tracks the yen one-for-one and moves on a blockchain — settlement between the Japanese and Korean sides could, in principle, be faster and cheaper, while the shopper still just taps a card. For background on how such tokens keep their value, read what a stablecoin is.

What already exists

SBI already distributes JPYSC, a yen stablecoin issued by SBI Shinsei Trust Bank and launched with Startale Group in June. It had about 20.1 billion yen ($127 million) in circulation as of Sept. 7, according to SBI VC Trade. But JPYSC is confined to SBI VC Trade accounts and cannot be sent to outside wallets yet; wider use on public blockchains depends on legal and tax clarity and regulatory approval. The companies have not said whether JPYSC will be part of the tests.

Shinhan Card has about 20 million cardholders and will link the project to Shinhan Financial's broader digital-asset work, including an August agreement with Visa to explore stablecoin issuance, transfers and card settlement.

Reality check

This is an exploration, not a product. No token has been chosen and no dates set for trials, let alone a launch. Still, it fits a pattern: Japan's biggest banks are running their own yen stablecoin pilot, and Korea is building won-backed tokens such as KRW1 on Injective.