Korea’s Shinhan Card signed a memorandum of understanding with SBI Holdings units SBI XDC Network APAC and SBI VC Trade to build a blockchain-based payment and settlement ecosystem. The partners will explore linking yen-denominated stablecoins to in-store card payments, run proofs of concept, and look at stablecoins for cross-border trade settlement between Japan and Korea.
Why it matters: Japanese visitors are among South Korea’s largest tourist groups, so card-linked stablecoin payments would be a practical consumer use case rather than a pilot in isolation. The plan is still early, with no named token or timeline, but it shows big card issuers starting to treat stablecoins as payment rails.
Source: SBI Holdings press release, October 21, 2026 and CoinDesk
Related: HSBC rolls out HK dollar stablecoin RedCoin to 3.3 million PayMe users
Image: Sgroey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
