Yen stablecoins take a test flight as South Korea and Japan tap traveler spending

South Korea’s Shinhan Card said Wednesday it has signed an agreement with Japan’s SBI VC Trade and SBI XDC Network APAC to test yen stablecoin payments for travelers and cross-border trade settlement.

The agreement, signed Tuesday, covers stablecoin card payments, wallet-to-wallet payments and cross-border trade settlement. The companies will also assess anti-money-laundering and fraud-detection controls. Shinhan Card is one of South Korea’s biggest credit card companies, while SBI operates banks, brokerages, insurers and crypto exchanges. The initiative is intended to support cross-border payments and settlement between the East Asian nations and improve payment convenience for travelers.

Travel between the two countries generated more than 10 million visitor arrivals in the first eight months of 2026, according to official tourism figures from both countries. South Korea was Japan’s largest source of foreign visitors with 7.42 million arrivals. Japan was its neighbor’s second-largest source with 2.7 million arrivals.

In April, Shinhan Card announced that it had completed proof-of-concept testing covering stablecoin payments and cross-border settlement. SBI VC Trade registered in March 2025 as Japan’s first electronic payment instruments exchange service provider, enabling it to handle USDC. Separately, Binance Pay lets visitors spend crypto at PayPay merchants in Japan.