South Korea Plans September Rollout for CBDC Pilot Phase

The Bank of Korea could launch the second phase of Project Hangang in September, expanding its wholesale central bank digital currency pilot to nine banks and testing tokenized bank deposits for everyday payments and government subsidy disbursements. The next stage will add payment features and let participating banks onboard merchants with partnership agreements.

Project Hangang uses a blockchain-based wholesale CBDC issued by the central bank as the settlement asset for deposit tokens created by commercial banks. Commercial banks issue tokenized versions of customer deposits that consumers can use for retail payments, while the wholesale CBDC is used to settle those tokens between banks.

The first phase ran from April to June 2025 and focused on building and proving the payment infrastructure. About 81,000 participants completed 114,880 transactions using deposit tokens during that period. The upcoming phase will increase participating banks from seven to nine, with Kyongnam Bank and iM Bank joining the trial.

Planned features for phase two include peer-to-peer transfers, biometric authentication for user access, and automated transfers of deposit tokens. Participating banks will be allowed to bring partner merchants into the trial so consumers can use deposit tokens at more outlets.

The central bank will test disbursing government subsidies through tokenized deposits to evaluate operational and administrative procedures, including distribution timing, traceability and reconciliation in a tokenized payments environment.

Officials say the phase will examine commercialization pathways for tokenized bank deposits and focus on real-world usability, settlement mechanics and interoperability between commercial bank tokens and the wholesale CBDC. The trial will also assess how depositor-facing token features interact with existing banking systems and how settlement finality is achieved using the central bank’s digital asset.

Technical tests of biometric logins and automated token transfers are intended to measure user convenience and security. Merchant onboarding aims to provide data on acceptance and transaction flows that could inform any later scaling and integration of tokenized deposits and wholesale CBDC settlement into the national payments system.