South Korea's KakaoBank advances stablecoin initiative to development stage: report

KakaoBank, the digital bank under South Korea's leading IT firm Kakao, has advanced its local currency-pegged stablecoin initiative to actual development stage, a Wednesday report from Newspim said.

The advancement can also be spotted on its official website, showing new recruitment for blockchain service backend developers. Key requirements include deep knowledge of smart contracts, an understanding of token standards, and experience managing transactions and operating full nodes.

The Block has reached out to KakaoBank for further comment.

KakaoBank Chief Financial Officer Kwon Tae-hoon previously said at its H1 2025 earnings release in August that the bank is reviewing various options to partake in digital finance, such as the issuance or custody of digital assets.

Prior to the announcement, KakaoBank and other major financial divisions under the Kakao Group formed a won-stablecoin task force to discuss their future initiatives in establishing a digital finance ecosystem.

Earlier in June, KakaoPay, the group's payments subsidiary, filed six copyright applications for stablecoin ticker symbols  — PKRW, KKRW, KRWP, KPKRW, KRWKP, KRWK — which seem to combine Kakao, or KakaoPay with the Korean won (KRW).

Kakao's stablecoin entry comes shortly after Naver, another South Korean tech giant, was reported to be launching a wallet service for a local stablecoin project in the city of Busan. Naver Financial, its fintech division, is reportedly in the process of a merger with Upbit, South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange.

Naver, like Kakao, has its own payments platform named NaverPay, which is used by 30 million people monthly, according to its website. KakaoPay has 42 million members with a monthly average user number of 24 million. South Korea's total population stands at 51.7 million.

Targeting stablecoin as their future growth engine, both Kakao and Naver are expected to utilize their tens of millions of user base they built — Kakao on the country's dominant mobile messaging service and Naver on its internet search engine — to gain traction in digital finance.

This race to stablecoin started as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who was elected earlier this year, chose the Korean won-stablecoin market as one of his key initiatives with an aim to protect monetary sovereignty against the dominant U.S. dollar stablecoin market.

Although several lawmakers have proposed regulatory groundwork for a local stablecoin market, legislative efforts have failed to make meaningful progress. This stalled development is complicated by the Bank of Korea's stance insisting that only registered banks be permitted to issue won-stablecoins, a position that has triggered pushback from local players.