Yonhap News Agency reported that on November 10, 2026, Shim Eun-seop, director of the Electronic Finance Inspection Bureau at South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service, said at a discussion at the Financial Investment Education Institute in Seoul’s Yeouido that if stablecoins are used as an electronic means of payment, applying the Electronic Financial Transactions Act is unavoidable. He tied that view to fairness with existing electronic payment methods, user protection, and the stability of payment and settlement.
He said that placing the same payment and settlement transaction under different laws according to the payment method could create regulatory-arbitrage confusion. He suggested introducing a small-amount licensing system under the Act and applying obligations that include stability safeguards, preparation and filing of terms, protection of top-up funds and settlement funds, protection of transaction information, and dispute handling.
Kim Bo-il, head of the Bank of Korea’s virtual-asset group, said it is necessary to consider how far a national payment system should rely on global private networks. He described his earlier position—that stablecoin issuance should begin with banks at the center and that issuer eligibility should be widened only after technical verification—as a compromise. In the government draft of the Basic Act on Digital Assets, expected to be released this month, stablecoin issuers are expected to take the form of bank-led consortia.
Reporting published November 10, 2026. Original article: https://www.techflowpost.com/zh-CN/newsletter/143883
