South Korea's CBDC pilot scales up to half a million users — and actual government cash 🏦

The Bank of Korea will launch the second phase of Project Hangang as early as September, expanding its wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot to nine banks and up to 500,000 users, according to Yonhap News Agency. Regional lenders Kyongnam Bank and iM Bank will join the seven original participants: KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori, Nonghyup, Industrial Bank of Korea, and BNK Busan.

The first phase ran from April to June 2025 with about 81,000 participants completing 114,880 transactions using deposit tokens at roughly 12,000 merchants. Banks had collectively invested around 30–35 billion won in infrastructure for that phase, according to a review by the HRF CBDC tracker. Only 42% of opened wallets were actively used for spending, a gap the next phase aims to close by adding features that resemble conventional banking.

Phase 2 introduces biometric fingerprint approvals, person-to-person wallet transfers, automatic top-ups from linked bank accounts, recurring auto-payments, cash receipt generation, and interest payments. It will also test government subsidy disbursements through programmable tokens with spending rules restricted to permitted purposes, vendors, and time windows. "From the second phase, we will lay the groundwork for commercialization," a Bank of Korea official told Yonhap.

The pilot uses a wholesale CBDC issued by the central bank as the settlement asset for deposit tokens issued by commercial banks, which consumers use for everyday payments. Kim Dong-seop, head of the bank's Digital Currency Planning Team, called the design "a middle ground between a CBDC and a stablecoin." The pilot will run on an open-ended timeline rather than a fixed close date, and new Bank of Korea Governor Shin Hyun-song made Project Hangang a centerpiece of his first policy address.