Hana Bank’s relationship with Upbit’s parent group has been taking shape for months. In March, Hana Financial Group signed a digital asset cooperation deal with Standard Chartered. In May, it
Hana Bank’s relationship with Upbit’s parent group has been taking shape for months. In March, Hana Financial Group signed a digital asset cooperation deal with Standard Chartered. In May, its board approved a 1.003 trillion won purchase of a 6.55% stake in Dunamu, the operator of Upbit, making Hana its fourth-largest shareholder. Then, on September 22, Hana Securities signed an MOU with Upbit Global, Upbit’s Singapore-based arm, to research joint products and asset management.
The bank signed an MOU with Upbit Global at its Seoul headquarters, focusing on the Travel Rule, which requires crypto platforms to share sender and receiver information when transfers meet certain thresholds.
Source: DigitalToday
Under the agreement, Hana Bank and Upbit Global will work on the technology and infrastructure needed to support these transfers. They will also monitor regulatory changes and test systems that can help the two companies meet future requirements.
The Travel Rule comes from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which sets global anti-money laundering standards. It requires crypto firms to collect and share sender and receiver information when a transfer crosses a set amount, similar to rules banks follow for wire transfers.
South Korea adopted the rule early, setting the threshold at 1 million won. Its exchanges use different systems to meet the requirement. Dunamu, Upbit’s operator, built its own system, VerifyVASP, while Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit created CODE. This means transfers between platforms using different systems need technology that can connect the two.
That becomes more important for Upbit Global because it handles overseas transfers. Cross-border transactions involve different countries, data formats and legal requirements. The Hana Bank and Upbit Global project aims to build the infrastructure needed to handle those differences.
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission is finishing the Digital Asset Basic Act, the law that will set formal licensing, reserve, and anti-money-laundering rules for stablecoin issuers and exchanges nationwide, with the government now targeting passage before the end of 2026. Once it passes, banks and exchanges won’t be able to show up with a plan, they’ll need compliance systems already built and running.
KB Kookmin, the country’s largest bank, filed 17 trademark applications in a single week for names like KBKRW and KRWST, an unusually literal way of staking a claim on stablecoin branding before the law even exists, so that when the bill passes it can launch under a name it already owns.
Woori Financial Group took a different path, increasing its existing partnership with Samsung Electronics to become the exclusive operator behind Samsung Wallet Money, betting that owning the distribution channel, a wallet already on millions of Galaxy phones, matters more than owning the token itself. NongHyup went the cautious route and still got flagged anyway, the FSC opened an inspection into how it was handling anti anonymity rules tied to its exchange partnerships, a reminder that even banks trying to comply can fall short once regulators start checking.
Instead of pooling resources with rivals to build a shared stablecoin, Hana Bank bought a direct stake in Dunamu, then followed with the Hana Securities MOU and now this Travel Rule infrastructure agreement. The other banks are moving to have a stablecoin ready to launch the day the law passes. Hana is racing to own the pipes that move money through Korea’s largest exchange, a bet that may likely pay off regardless of which stablecoin eventually wins.
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