SBI DigiTrust, NICE and DSRV to Validate Japan-Korea Stablecoin Payments by December 2026

SBI DigiTrust, NICE and DSRV Sign On

SBI DigiTrust signed a basic agreement with Korean payment operator NICE Information & Communication and blockchain infrastructure firm DSRV on Thursday (October 1) to jointly validate a stablecoin-based remittance and settlement scheme between Japan and Korea. The scenario is deliberately concrete: a Japanese visitor to Korea pays a merchant with a QR code, and the funds travel from Japan to the store over stablecoin rails rather than the card networks that carry most cross-border tourist spending today. The three companies will trace how money moves at each step, which payment instructions carry the transfer, and how their separate systems connect end to end, with the validation scheduled to finish by the end of December 2026. Work is split along home turf. NICE Information & Communication brings its Korean merchant network and payment operations, DSRV reviews the blockchain technology requirements and system architecture, and SBI DigiTrust applies Japanese regulatory and financial expertise to shape the remittance and payment design. The user side assumes a Japanese traveler paying from a crypto wallet, so interoperability between the visitor's wallet and the Korean merchant's systems is one question the test must answer. In its own announcement, SBI DigiTrust framed the work as more than a feasibility check: the validation will also examine how the scheme links to existing financial infrastructure and payment systems, how it would run in production, and whether it is commercially viable at realistic transaction volumes and costs, with the findings feeding the eventual commercialization decision. Regulation sets the boundary. Korea's stablecoin framework is still taking shape and policy debate there is ongoing, so the partners will define scope around what can currently be tested. No commercial service, launch schedule or brand has been confirmed. Remittance between the two countries otherwise runs through correspondent banking and currency conversion, a route that adds cost and settlement time to every transaction.

From Test Tokens to Live Flows

This is the second stablecoin experiment SBI has attached to the Korea corridor, and it differs from its predecessor in one decisive respect. An earlier test, run by Kyobo Life Insurance together with the SBI Group, moved won- and yen-denominated test tokens through institutional fund transfers, currency exchange and settlement in a controlled environment, with no real money or actual stablecoins changing hands. The new plan assumes a live payment flow in which a Japanese user's funds reach a Korean merchant through QR settlement, and the partners are checking business viability, including expected transaction scale and cost, alongside technical feasibility. The earlier pilot targeted institutional flows; this one aims at the consumer checkout, a step further toward retail use. For Japanese tourists, the practical payoff would be paying in a familiar instrument while the merchant receives won-settled funds, cutting out at least one conversion step. For merchants, the open question is whether settlement arrives faster and cheaper than card acquiring. QR acceptance is already widespread across Korean merchants through NICE's network. Which token or currency pairing underpins the flow has not been named. The initiative also sits inside a broader SBI build-out. bitbank, one of Japan's longest-running domestic crypto exchanges, confirmed on October 1 that SBI Holdings' buyout is complete: the purchase of its own shares from MIXI and Ceres closed the transaction, making bitbank a wholly owned SBI subsidiary. Toshiyuki Hirosue stays on as CEO, while Tomohiko Kondo, president of group unit SBI VC Trade, joins the bitbank board. Full ownership of a domestic exchange gives the group a retail touchpoint in Japan that a remittance scheme could eventually plug into, although no such integration has been announced. SBI DigiTrust says it is developing stablecoin use cases in step with institutional trends in each market, which positions the Japan-Korea validation as one piece of a longer program rather than a standalone trial.

What Has Not Been Disclosed

COINOTAG's read: the terms on the table are narrow and checkable. The companies' own announcement commits three named parties to one use case, Japanese visitors paying Korean merchants by QR code, and one deadline, the end of December 2026. What has not been disclosed matters just as much: the token issuer and design, whether the model follows fiat-backed issuance or something closer to algorithmic stablecoins, the funding arrangement, fee economics and any launch date. Traditional finance is not standing still either; banks such as JPMorgan Chase have built their own tokenized settlement rails. The open question is whether a corridor-level stablecoin route can beat card economics in tourist flows, and the December milestone will supply the first real data.