MoonPay launches Korea unit, explores stablecoin and remittance deals with Woori, KB and KakaoBank

"We have no plans yet to issue a Korean won stablecoin directly in Korea," MoonPay co-founder Lee Bu-geon said on Sept. 29 at an event at Conrad Seoul marking the launch of the global crypto payments company's Korean unit, MoonPay Korea. MoonPay on the same day unveiled plans to work with Woori Bank, KB Financial Group and KakaoBank on stablecoins (tokens pegged to the value of a fiat currency) and cross-border remittances, and said it would make Korea its hub for Asia.

It started with a Woori Bank MOU in April

MoonPay's entry into Korea was public before the launch event. On April 30, the company announced in its official newsroom that it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Woori Bank to cooperate on infrastructure for won-backed stablecoins. According to that announcement, the partnership covers global distribution, cross-border settlement, wallet access and currency conversion infrastructure for won stablecoins, and the two sides agreed to explore use cases such as remittances, merchant settlements and institutional payments. In the same announcement, Lee was named head of Asia-Pacific, based in Seoul and overseeing the company's business in the region. "Stablecoins are becoming the backbone of digital finance, and Korea is emerging as one of the world's most forward-looking markets," Chief Executive Officer Ivan Soto-Wright said at the time. The announcement said the MoonPay group holds licenses including authorization under the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and a New York BitLicense.

Also in April, MoonPay teamed up with Kosdaq-listed Sungho Electronics and its largest shareholder, Seoryong Electronics, to acquire Finger, one of Korea's first-generation fintech companies, for 110 billion won (about $81 million), The Korea Times reported. MoonPay said it is also working to connect its financial systems with Finger's.

Three banks, three different roles

MoonPay Korea will focus on "last-mile" infrastructure that connects global payment networks with actual bank services, namely won deposits and withdrawals and links to domestic payment methods, local outlet EBN reported. The Korea Times said MoonPay named cross-border fund flows such as remittances for students studying abroad, payments by foreign nationals living in Korea and overseas payouts by businesses as its main targets. The partnerships disclosed at the launch event are listed below. None of the three involves a definitive agreement or a service launch; all are at the stage of jointly reviewing business models or testing technology (Woori Bank signed its MOU in April).

How a one-hour student remittance would work

The trial with KakaoBank is the most concrete. The goal is to complete the entire process within one hour, from a transfer request in Korea to sending the funds as stablecoins, converting them into dollars and depositing them into a local bank account in the United States. The companies are considering a structure in which KakaoBank handles the remittance procedures required under Korean regulations, while MoonPay handles overseas receipt, currency exchange and payout. Starting with remittances and payments, the two plan to examine whether their cooperation can expand to distribution of won stablecoins and to trading, custody and exchange of stablecoins in multiple currencies.

"When we met with banks, what they needed most was liquidity provision."

Lee Bu-geon, MoonPay co-founder (Sept. 29 media day, as reported by Bloter)

MoonPay is counting on liquidity provision and conversion between stablecoins as its main sources of revenue in Korea, according to Korean tech outlet Bloter.

No won coin of its own

There is no MoonPay service Korean investors can use yet. The company said it is preparing to register in Korea as a virtual asset service provider (VASP), targeting 2027, and is receiving consulting for Information Security Management System (ISMS) certification. It plans to expand its domestic services in stages after completing the registration and service-specific licensing. No won stablecoin has been issued in Korea either, because the relevant legal framework is not yet in place. According to Bloter, Lee said that for now MoonPay should act as an infrastructure provider, and that it is focusing more on requests from Korean companies asking whether dollar stablecoins or offshore issuance would be possible under MoonPay's licenses, since those requests are more common. He added that MoonPay is willing to join a won stablecoin consortium, but that the pending legislation does not yet address whether foreign companies can take part.

MoonPay, founded in 2019, said it has processed more than $45 billion in cumulative volume, has more than 32 million verified users and has worked with more than 1,500 onboarding and transaction partners over the past 12 months. "Beyond simply holding or trading digital assets, their use could expand significantly if people were able to send, receive and make payments through familiar financial services," Lee said at the event, according to The Korea Times. MoonPay does not issue its own token, so no related asset trades on Korean exchanges such as Upbit and Bithumb.