According to the Korea Economic Daily, Coupang Pay is recruiting legal specialists with stablecoin experience to assess issuance, usage, and distribution mechanisms. The move is being read by the industry as a clear signal that Coupang is advancing its own stablecoin initiative, which would likely be pegged 1:1 to the Korean won.
Today, Coupang’s online payments rely heavily on credit-card networks and bank transfers, incurring steep intermediary fees on each transaction. By shifting to a blockchain-based stablecoin settlement system, funds could be cleared peer-to-peer, dramatically reducing the involvement and costs of banks and payment gateways. Industry estimates suggest the platform could save hundreds of billions of won annually—equivalent to tens of millions of dollars—which would translate into significant economies of scale on an e-commerce platform with massive daily transaction volumes.
The key advantage of a stablecoin is price stability. Unlike volatile assets such as Bitcoin, a won-pegged stablecoin would keep transaction value constant, shielding merchants and users from exchange-rate fluctuations and delivering a user experience more akin to digital cash payments.
On the regulatory front, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) has already imposed strict controls on crypto assets, including mandatory travel-rule compliance (KYC verification) for both sides of transactions, and is accelerating the development of a dedicated legal framework for stablecoin issuance and operation, expected to take shape before 2025. Coupang is not alone in exploring the terrain—Hana Bank has piloted a blockchain won, and Klaytn, owned by Kakao, hosts multiple token initiatives. But if Coupang, one of Korea’s largest e-commerce platforms, successfully embeds a stablecoin into its core payment flow, it would define a new paradigm for enterprise-grade blockchain payments in Korea and could drive a broader upgrade in payment efficiency across the retail ecosystem.
Coupang is quietly advancing a won-backed stablecoin project to replace traditional payment rails via blockchain technology, targeting annual fee savings of hundreds of billions of won and a reshaped e-commerce payment landscape.