Bank of Korea presses lawmakers to hardwire bank-led KRW stablecoin issuance
The central bank also flagged expanded deposit-token pilots for 2H 2026 as issuer eligibility stalls the Digital Asset Basic Act.
The Bank of Korea has reiterated to South Korea’s National Assembly that won-denominated stablecoins should be issued first through bank-led consortiums, with banks retaining majority control. In parallel, it is pushing ahead with deposit-token pilots in 2H 2026, keeping issuer eligibility as the key unresolved blocker for the Digital Asset Basic Act.
Key Takeaways
- Materials submitted to the National Assembly’s finance committee restated that KRW stablecoins should be issued first via bank-led consortiums.
- The Bank of Korea proposed safeguards including “priority issuance by bank-led consortiums” and “a statutory policy body involving relevant agencies.”
- Deposit-token development is set to continue in 2H 2026, with pilots spanning subsidy payments, vouchers, EV charging, and other public transactions.
- The Digital Asset Basic Act remains delayed as policymakers disagree on stablecoin issuer eligibility and the Bank of Korea pushes majority bank ownership of issuers.
BOK Reasserts Bank-First KRW Stablecoin Issuance to Lawmakers
The Bank of Korea (BOK) submitted materials to the National Assembly’s finance committee on Thursday, published July 9, 2026, reiterating that won-denominated stablecoins should first be issued through bank-led consortiums.
The submission did not just restate a preference. It framed a market structure: issuance routed through bank-led groups, with governance anchored inside the regulated banking perimeter. For traders, that matters because it narrows the plausible design space for a KRW stablecoin regime. The BOK is not treating issuer eligibility as an open question. It is trying to pre-commit the rulebook toward bank-controlled issuance.
The central bank also called for safeguards, including “priority issuance by bank-led consortiums” and “a statutory policy body involving relevant agencies.” That combination reads like an attempt to lock in both who gets to issue and who gets to coordinate oversight, before the Digital Asset Basic Act settles the broader framework.
Issuer Eligibility Remains the Digital Asset Basic Act’s Sticking Point
South Korea’s Digital Asset Basic Act has repeatedly stalled over a single high-impact variable: who is allowed to issue stablecoins. The packet does not detail the alternative issuer models being discussed by other stakeholders, but it does state the BOK’s position has divided policymakers and industry groups.
The BOK has pushed for banks to retain majority ownership of stablecoin issuers. That is the crux. If lawmakers accept majority bank ownership and bank-led consortium priority, the likely outcome is a KRW stablecoin market that looks more like a bank product extension than a fintech-led payments token.
The timeline risk remains unresolved. The government told President Lee Jae-myung in January it aimed to meet a Q1 2026 timeline for the bill, but that target has slipped amid the US-Israeli war with Iran that began in late February, local elections, and delays reorganizing the Assembly’s committee structure. No revised legislative date is specified in the packet, leaving traders with headline risk but no calendar.
Deposit Tokens Move Ahead: 2H 2026 Use Cases Named
While the stablecoin bill grinds on, the BOK is signaling nearer-term progress on bank-linked tokenized money through deposit tokens, described as digital tokens that represent commercial bank deposits.
The central bank said it plans to continue developing deposit-token use cases in the second half of 2026, naming government subsidy payments, vouchers, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and additional real-world transactions for the general public.
Policy momentum here has been building. In April 2026, BOK Governor Hyun-Song Shin expressed support for deposit tokens and CBDCs in his first public address. That same month, the Ministry of Economy and Finance announced a pilot to use tokenized deposits for government operational spending. Even without the Digital Asset Basic Act finalized, deposit tokens give Seoul a path to digitized settlement rails that stay explicitly bank-native.
Signals Traders Should Track in Seoul’s Stablecoin Rulebook
The next inflection is whether the National Assembly finance committee moves on issuer eligibility language that matches the BOK’s bank-led consortium priority, or whether draft text opens the door to non-bank issuer models.
A second signal is institutional: whether a statutory multi-agency policy body for stablecoins appears in draft legislation or is announced by relevant agencies, aligning with the BOK’s requested safeguard.
On the implementation side, 2H 2026 updates on deposit-token pilots will matter most if they include rollout details for subsidy and voucher payments and EV charging transactions, since those are concrete, repeatable flows.
The final timing variable is any revised milestone for the Digital Asset Basic Act after the slipped Q1 2026 target. Until that is clarified, KRW stablecoin probability remains a function of politics, not product readiness.
My Take: Korea’s Bank-Led Stablecoin Push vs. the Faster Deposit-Token Rail
I read the BOK’s submission as an attempt to pre-wire the KRW stablecoin market into a bank-controlled structure before the bill’s compromises get negotiated in public. The threshold that matters is whether “priority issuance by bank-led consortiums” survives into draft text, because that would shift the opportunity set from open issuer competition to a bank-gated franchise.
Deposit tokens look like the faster rail because they do not require Seoul to resolve the most contentious question in the stablecoin debate. The real test is whether 2H 2026 pilots move beyond pilots into recurring public-sector payment flows, since that is what would make tokenized bank money matter for KRW liquidity and on-off-ramp market structure.
