Partnerships among banks, fintechs, platforms and blockchain firms around won-denominated stablecoins are accelerating in the second half, with payment and settlement use cases moving into more concrete pilot tests. Companies are running proofs of concept on real-time settlement, on-chain payment flows and links between digital wallets and existing card networks. Cross-border remittances are also emerging as a key testing area. Debate continues over regulation, including issuers, reserve assets and approval requirements.

MoonPay has launched PayBox, a payment vault that works inside Claude and ChatGPT, enabling AI agents to prepare transactions on users’ behalf. Users can complete payments and move funds after passkey approval. The product stores crypto wallets and payment cards and supports token swaps, bridging and transfers to DeFi protocols such as Aave across Solana and Ethereum-compatible chains. It also supports the x402 open payments protocol and uses a security model combining multi-party computation and trusted execution environments.