Shinhan Financial Group and Visa have signed a strategic agreement to test stablecoin infrastructure in South Korea, adding a major local banking group to the list of institutions moving digital-asset pilots closer to payments operations.

The companies plan to use Visa's stablecoin platform to verify core lifecycle functions including issuance, transfers, remittance, and redemption. They also plan to jointly design a business model suited to South Korea's financial environment, according to Korean reports citing Shinhan's Aug. 26 announcement.

The agreement was signed Aug. 24 at Shinhan's headquarters in Seoul. It covers digital assets, AI-based payments, B2B payments, and possible stablecoin use in card-payment settlement. Shinhan Bank, Shinhan Card, and Jeju Bank are expected to participate alongside Visa's global payment network and digital payment technology.

The work remains exploratory: the reports describe pilots and model design, not a commercial stablecoin launch. That distinction matters as South Korea continues debating stablecoin rules, including who should be allowed to issue won-backed tokens and how reserves should be supervised.

For Visa, the deal is another test of stablecoin settlement infrastructure with regulated financial institutions. For Shinhan, it extends existing digital-asset experiments into a broader payments partnership, with stablecoin issuance, transfer, and redemption checks as the first practical layer.