Shinhan Financial taps Visa for stablecoin payments and settlement push

South Korea’s Shinhan Financial Group has signed a strategic agreement with Visa to build stablecoin payment infrastructure while expanding its work into AI-powered payments and business transactions. Summary Shinhan Financial and Visa will test stablecoin issuance, transfers and redemption using Visa’s infrastructure. The companies plan to develop a Korea focused stablecoin model and test its use in card payment settlements. The partnership also covers AI based payment models and expanded B2B and B2C payment services. Shinhan has already tested stablecoin payments on Solana and expanded into tokenized financial products. Shinhan Financial Group said Wednesday that the partnership will initially focus on testing the infrastructure needed to issue, transfer and redeem stablecoins using Visa’s existing stablecoin technology, with the two companies also planning to design a model suited to South Korea’s financial system. Shinhan Visa stablecoin partnership puts infrastructure first Under the agreement, Shinhan and Visa will examine how stablecoins can be integrated into financial services operated by the Korean group, moving beyond isolated blockchain trials toward payment infrastructure that could work across several businesses. The initial work will cover the stablecoin lifecycle, including issuance, remittance and redemption. Shinhan said the two companies will use Visa’s platform to verify those processes before developing services designed around local financial and regulatory requirements. Payment settlement is another part of the planned work. Shinhan and Visa intend to incorporate stablecoins into joint pilot projects for card settlement while also studying AI-based payment models and new services for both business and consumer transactions. Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Jin Ok-dong said the agreement expands the group’s existing relationship with Visa into digital finance. “Through this agreement, we have expanded our long-standing partnership with Visa to the broader digital finance sector,” Jin said. Shinhan plans to bring several of its main subsidiaries into the work, including Shinhan Bank, Shinhan Card and Jeju Bank. Visa will contribute its international payment network and digital payment technology as the companies develop the projects. Jin said Shinhan’s financial capabilities and Visa’s infrastructure would be used to jointly design new financial models and provide new services to customers. The project adds another stablecoin initiative to Shinhan’s digital asset work after the financial group reported net income of 1.82 trillion won, or roughly $1.3 billion, for the latest quarter. Shinhan has already tested stablecoin payments on Solana Several parts of the Visa agreement build on payment experiments already being carried out by Shinhan subsidiaries. In April, Shinhan Card partnered with the Solana Foundation to develop and test stablecoin payments using the Solana blockchain, as previously reported by crypto.news. The proof-of-concept uses Solana’s testnet to simulate transactions between customers and merchants under real-world payment scenarios.