IT-based information services company Hekto Innovation said on Tuesday it is building a stablecoin payment ecosystem centered on a digital-asset wallet, marking a full entry into the execution phase of its mid- to long-term growth strategy.

Hekto Innovation is pursuing the buildout of a stablecoin payment ecosystem in which wallets, payments and platforms are organically connected. Its subsidiaries, global fintech company Hekto Financial and wallet-infrastructure specialist Hekto Wallet One, will serve as key pillars of the ecosystem by securing competitiveness in payment and settlement, and in the wallet segment, respectively.

At the top of the ecosystem, Hekto Innovation aims to link customer data across wallets, payments and platforms to raise retention. It is also seeking to create a virtuous cycle that leads to customer lock-in and new customer inflows.

A wallet is an essential gateway for stablecoins, supporting know-your-customer checks and real-time payments and settlement. In line with that, Hekto Innovation acquired Hekto Wallet One, a virtual asset service provider with the only blockchain wallet technology infrastructure in South Korea, in September last year to internalise the technology. About 40 percent of domestic virtual asset service providers currently use Hekto Wallet One's services, giving the company a structure that can expand services immediately if stablecoins spread.

Synergies from Hekto Innovation's acquisition of Hekto Wallet One emerged first in the global market. In October last year, Hekto Innovation was the only South Korean company to cooperate in the wallet segment of Arc, Circle's stablecoin-dedicated blockchain mainnet public testnet, and it is preparing integration work.

Hekto Innovation plans a broad rollout of the wallet this year. The first targets are B2B customer pools secured by Hekto Financial, including client companies of its membership-based simple cash payment service, Naetongjang Payment, and global cross-border settlement clients.

It is also preparing to target general consumers. Given the nature of stablecoins, there is sufficient demand for wallets for actual uses such as payments and remittances. A representative example is foreign workers who are excluded from the regulated financial system and use stablecoins instead of currency. The government says there were about 2,650,000 foreign residents in South Korea last year, accounting for 5.2 percent of the population.

Hekto Financial will support the wallet's entry into global markets. After participating in October last year as the only domestic partner in the payment segment of Circle's Arc public testnet, Hekto Financial recently joined Circle Payments Network (CPN). CPN is a global network that supports real-time cross-border fund transactions using dollar-based stablecoins such as USDC. As Hekto Financial connects to global networks, Hekto Innovation has secured a strategic entry route enabling its wallet infrastructure to link to, and expand with, various payment networks.

Lee Hyun-chul (이현철), chief executive of Hekto Innovation, said digital-asset wallets will emerge as core infrastructure in the stablecoin payments market that goes beyond simple asset storage and influences market entry and the competitive landscape. He said Hekto Innovation will lead the building of a Hekto Group ecosystem that connects wallets with payments, settlement and platforms, while driving mid- to long-term corporate value enhancement and global business expansion.