Bank of Korea Launches 24-Hour Won Settlement Pilot

The pilot launched Monday with four domestic institutions: KB Kookmin Bank, Woori Bank, Hana Bank, and Shinhan Bank. The first recorded transaction reached approximately 1.4 billion won, roughly $1 million, shortly after the 9 a.m. start. The network operates continuously throughout the business week, closing only on weekends and public holidays.

Foreign participants can now settle transactions using accounts held with Registered Foreign Institutions for KRW Business (RFI-Ks). This structure removes the requirement for overseas investors to maintain direct accounts with domestic Korean financial institutions. While the current trial involves only local banks, the system is slated for full operation by January 2027, when international financial institutions are expected to integrate into the network.

This initiative is a cornerstone of the government’s Won Internationalization Roadmap, which seeks to modernize the nation's foreign-exchange infrastructure. Although the project runs parallel to the bank's blockchain-based efforts—such as Project Agorá and Project Hangang—the wire network functions independently of those tokenized reserve and deposit-token experiments. Regulators intend to refine the system’s technical performance and liquidity protocols throughout the testing phase to ensure stability before the upcoming full-scale rollout.