USDShinhan Financial, Visa to Build Stablecoin and AI Payment Infrastructure
Partnership targets issuance, settlement, card payments and Korea-specific financial infrastructure
TL;DR
- Shinhan Financial Group and Visa agreed on August 26, 2026, to develop stablecoin infrastructure, AI-based payment models and B2B and B2C payment services.
- Shinhan plans to use Visa’s enterprise stablecoin platform to test issuance, remittance and redemption while jointly designing a Korea-specific business model.
- The initiative extends Shinhan’s digital-asset work after earlier stablecoin payment and Korean won-denominated tokenized-fund projects.
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Shinhan Financial Group and Visa signed a strategic business agreement on August 26, 2026, to develop stablecoin-based financial infrastructure, artificial intelligence-powered payment models and business payment services in South Korea. Shinhan plans to use Visa’s enterprise stablecoin platform to test issuance, remittance and redemption while the companies jointly design a business model tailored to the country’s financial environment.
Shinhan Financial Group is one of South Korea’s five largest financial conglomerates. The agreement is the first formal adoption of Visa’s enterprise stablecoin infrastructure by a top-tier South Korean financial group and is intended to test a full domestic settlement stack. Visa launched the enterprise infrastructure in July 2026.
Visa and Shinhan also plan joint pilot projects that would apply stablecoins to bank card payment settlement while expanding business-to-business and business-to-consumer payment services. The partnership will separately examine AI-based future payment models as part of Shinhan’s broader “future finance” business.
“Through this agreement, we have expanded our long-standing partnership with Visa to the broader digital finance sector,” Jin Ok-dong, CEO of Shinhan Financial Group, said. “Going forward, we will combine Shinhan's financial capabilities with Visa's global infrastructure to jointly design new future finance models and deliver differentiated financial experiences to our customers.”
Shinhan plans to involve banking and card subsidiaries
Shinhan said it plans to combine the capabilities of major subsidiaries including Shinhan Bank, Shinhan Card and Jeju Bank with Visa’s global payment network and digital technology. The group reported net income of 1.82 trillion won, or $1.3 billion, in the last quarter and has around 134 trillion won, or $100 billion, in assets under management.
The Visa partnership also places the payment company ahead of Mastercard in bank-native stablecoin settlement infrastructure in South Korea, according to the supplied information. Mastercard’s crypto partnerships in the country have so far stopped short of full stablecoin settlement integration.
Shinhan’s latest initiative follows earlier digital-asset projects involving stablecoin payments and tokenized investments. Shinhan Card announced a partnership with the Solana Foundation in April 2026 to trial stablecoin payment systems on the Solana Layer 1 blockchain.
Earlier in August 2026, Shinhan’s asset-management arm signed a four-party memorandum of understanding with the Solana Foundation, Etherfuse and Orca to test the issuance and distribution of a Korean won-denominated tokenized fund. The tokenized-fund initiative was also cited in a Solana X post.
South Korea is meanwhile advancing the Digital Asset Basic Act, a broad digital-asset framework covering stablecoins, virtual asset service provider licensing and crypto exchange-traded funds. Shinhan and Visa’s plan to develop a Korea-specific stablecoin business model is being pursued as that legislative framework advances.
The combined initiatives give Shinhan several parallel digital-finance projects spanning stablecoin issuance, movement and redemption, card settlement, AI-based payment models, B2B and B2C payments, blockchain payment trials and a Korean won-denominated tokenized investment product.
This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.
