Fintech & payments regulation in South Korea (2026)

Following Project Hangang's initial pilot, the Bank of Korea added two more commercial banks to bring real-world CBDC testing partners to nine, signalling a transition from limited-user trials toward broader retail digital won infrastructure deployment.

Representative Byung-deok Min introduced the General Act on Digital Assets, proposing a comprehensive umbrella law covering 12 digital-asset business domains with tiered licensing, 100% stablecoin reserve requirements, and unified FSC supervision, designed to replace the current patchwork of VAUPA and AML rules with a single coherent statutory framework.

The Bank of Korea, FSC, and FSS jointly launched a three-month retail CBDC pilot using deposit tokens issued by seven commercial banks within a regulatory sandbox, allowing up to 100,000 participants to make real-world purchases, South Korea's first live retail digital-currency test.

The three authorities signed an MOU establishing the legal and technical framework for a deposit-token system backed by wholesale CBDC reserves, and seven commercial banks received regulatory sandbox approval to issue tokenised deposits, defining the architecture for Korea's digital currency infrastructure.

Cabinet-approved revisions to the Enforcement Decree of the Electronic Financial Transactions Act took effect, requiring prepaid payment service providers to separately manage 100% of customer balances and expanding registration obligations, closing a consumer-protection gap exposed by multiple prepaid e-commerce collapses.

South Korea's first conduct-and-prudential crypto statute took full effect, requiring VASPs to hold ≥80% of user assets in cold wallets, segregate client deposits, maintain mandatory insurance against hacking, and prohibit market manipulation, marking the shift from AML-only registration to full investor-protection regulation of crypto markets.

The National Assembly passed VAUPA, creating statutory prohibitions on use of material non-public information, price manipulation, and disorderly trading in virtual asset markets, with a one-year delayed enforcement date, the first dedicated investor-protection law for Korean crypto markets, triggering a major compliance build-out across exchanges.

The FSC opened the commercial launch of Financial MyData, enabling consumers to aggregate banking, insurance, card, and investment data on a single platform via licensed operators using standardised APIs, operationalising open finance and introducing a statutory data-portability right for the first time in Korea.

Amendments to the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information took effect, requiring all virtual asset service providers to register with the FSC and comply with AML/KYC obligations including real-name bank-account verification, establishing Korea's first formal regulatory registration regime for crypto exchanges.

A landmark amendment introduced a new 'personal credit information management business' (MyData) licensing category and granted individuals statutory data-portability rights over their financial information, providing the legal foundation for open banking and the FSC's subsequent MyData licensing programme.

The Special Act on Support for Financial Innovation came into effect, creating a sandbox granting fintech firms time-limited regulatory exemptions to test innovative services; by April 2025, over 549 services had been designated, one of the most active fintech sandbox programmes in Asia and a primary driver of Korea's fintech licensing evolution.