- Ji Man-soo, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of Finance, said policymakers should review concrete use plans and feasibility before deciding who should issue a won stablecoin.
- He said Hong Kong has mapped out stablecoin use cases through operators including HSBC and AnchorPoint Financial, spanning cross-border payments, domestic payments, tokenized asset trading and supply-chain finance.
- The market increasingly sees actual use cases as central to the won stablecoin debate, alongside issuers and reserve-asset management. That means policymakers need to design specific applications for payments, asset tokenization and trade finance to make the framework effective.
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South Korea should assess specific use cases and the feasibility of a won-denominated stablecoin before deciding who should issue it, according to the Korea Institute of Finance.
The priority is to build out practical applications, as Hong Kong has done in areas including cross-border payments, domestic payments, tokenized asset trading and supply-chain finance.
Ji Man-soo, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of Finance, told iNews24 in a report published June 20 that South Korea should refer to Hong Kong’s stablecoin policy when designing its own framework.
Hong Kong built its issuance system around businesses tied to HSBC and Standard Chartered and went beyond granting issuance licenses by setting out specific use cases for the tokens. Those uses include cross-border payments, domestic payments, tokenized asset trading and supply-chain finance.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority granted stablecoin issuance licenses in April to two operators, HSBC’s Hong Kong unit and AnchorPoint Financial. Both plan to issue stablecoins pegged one-to-one to the Hong Kong dollar in the second half of the year.
AnchorPoint Financial is a joint venture set up by Standard Chartered’s Hong Kong unit, Animoca Brands and Hong Kong Telecom. HSBC would focus on retail and merchant payments and purchases of tokenized assets by individuals, while AnchorPoint Financial would center on corporate cross-border payments and supply-chain finance.
Hong Kong is not treating stablecoins solely as a payment instrument. It is pursuing them as part of a broader digital-currency strategy linked to central bank digital currencies, tokenized deposits and assets, and cross-border payments. The HKMA has run Project LionRock, a CBDC development initiative, mBridge, a multilateral real-time cross-border payments pilot, and Project Ensemble, a trial involving tokenized deposits and assets.
HSBC, Standard Chartered and Animoca Brands also took part in those pilot programs. Ji said the HKMA appeared to consider not only regulatory compliance, but also synergies with its digital-finance transition strategy, clear use plans and the capacity to carry them out.
He said Hong Kong’s plans for cross-border payments and supply-chain finance would strengthen the city’s advantages as a hub for entrepot trade and trade finance. That, he said, suggests South Korea’s won stablecoin debate should begin with what problems it can solve in the domestic financial and payments system.
Ji described Hong Kong as a representative case of regulator-led, bank-centered stablecoin issuance. He also said policymakers should pay attention to the structural changes that more diverse and digital cross-border payment methods could bring to the international monetary system.
As debate over a won stablecoin intensifies, the market is focusing not only on issuers and reserve-asset management, but also on actual use cases and institutional linkages. Hong Kong’s example suggests the framework would be more effective if policymakers design specific applications for payments, asset tokenization and trade finance at the same time.
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