Shinhan Financial And Visa Forge Strategic Alliance To Develop Stablecoin And AI Payment Infrastructure
Shinhan Financial Group has entered into a strategic cooperation agreement with Visa to advance digital asset services and next-generation financial infrastructure. The partnership, formalized on August 26 by Shinhan Financial Chairman Jin Ok-dong and Visa President Chris Newkirk in Seoul, operationalizes discussions that began between the two companies’ leadership in April.
Under the agreement, Shinhan Financial will utilize Visa’s stablecoin platform to validate core functionalities including token issuance, transfers, and redemption. The collaborators intend to co-design business models tailored to South Korea’s regulatory framework and domestic market conditions. Beyond stablecoin infrastructure, the initiative encompasses exploring tokenized settlement for credit card billing, developing artificial intelligence-powered payment architectures, and expanding both business-to-business and business-to-consumer payment offerings.
The group plans to integrate capabilities from its banking, card, and Jeju Bank subsidiaries with Visa’s global network and technological resources to address evolving demands in digital finance. The arrangement represents an expansion of the existing partnership into the broader digital finance sector, with the stated objective of delivering differentiated financial experiences to customers through newly designed service models.
Proof-of-Concept Testing and AI Payment Pilots
Shinhan Card, the group’s card subsidiary led by Chief Executive Officer Park Chang-hoon, has already completed proof-of-concept trials for six stablecoin and blockchain use cases. These tests evaluated whether conventional fiat-based card payment systems can interoperate with digital asset payment and settlement environments and ultimately be developed into commercial services, with participation from Visa, Mastercard, Fireblocks, and various domestic and international blockchain firms. The pilot scenarios included peer-to-peer blockchain payments, integration with external digital wallets, a hybrid debit-credit model backed by stablecoin collateral, cross-border remittance and settlement, payment-exchange-settlement networks, and IC chip-based hardware wallet technology.
In the debit-credit hybrid structure, stablecoins can be withdrawn immediately or held as collateral to establish a spending limit, merging characteristics of digital assets with traditional credit mechanisms. The cross-border remittance pilot specifically sought to determine whether international payment flows could be processed with greater speed and lower cost. In collaboration with Solana, the company also examined a smart contract-based model designed to execute transactions automatically once predefined conditions are met. Additional technical evaluations include non-custodial wallet operability and oracle systems linking real-world transaction data to blockchain networks.
Separately, Shinhan Card conducted live-environment demonstrations of AI agent payments in collaboration with Mastercard, becoming the first South Korean card issuer to do so. In a pilot linked to a global mobility platform, an artificial intelligence system autonomously identified transportation options, completed a booking, and processed payment following a single user authorization.
The two companies jointly designed supporting infrastructure spanning authentication, authorization management, payment procedures, AI capability upgrades, and merchant integration, with particular attention to maintaining user control and security within automated workflows. The company also partnered with the Solana Foundation in April to test Web3 payment scenarios on the Solana testnet and is participating in the Solana Foundation and Google Cloud’s AI Agentic Hackathon as an institutional partner to foster solutions combining stablecoin infrastructure with autonomous payment agents.
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About The Author
Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in crypto, AI, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
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Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in crypto, AI, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
