Bank of Korea Plans September Rollout for CBDC Pilot's Next Phase: Sources
South Korea's central bank CBDC initiative will incorporate two additional regional banking institutions, enhanced payment capabilities and experimentation with government subsidy distribution via tokenized deposits
South Korea's central bank may roll out Project Hangang's second operational phase, its wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiative, as soon as September, reports from Yonhap News indicate.
This upcoming phase will broaden bank involvement from seven institutions to nine, implement additional payment functionalities and conduct trials for government subsidy distribution utilizing tokenized bank deposits. The existing participant roster will welcome regional banking institutions Kyongnam Bank and iM Bank.
Project Hangang operates through a blockchain-based wholesale CBDC that the central bank issues as the settlement instrument for deposit tokens that commercial banks create. End users can subsequently utilize these bank-issued tokens to conduct routine payment transactions.
The pilot's initial phase concentrated on establishing payment infrastructure. This stage ran from April to June 2025, drawing approximately 81,000 participants who executed 114,880 transactions utilizing deposit tokens.
The upcoming second phase will investigate commercial viability, incorporating features such as peer-to-peer transfer capabilities, biometric authentication mechanisms and automatic deposit token transfer functionality. Banking institutions participating in the program will additionally gain authorization to onboard merchants with whom they maintain existing partnership arrangements into the initiative.