Shinhan Investment & Securities said in a report issued on Tuesday that Hecto Group, centered on Hecto Innovation, is "mainstream in global stablecoins" and has secured a favorable business environment in line with trends in the global stablecoin market.

Research fellow Byung-hwa Lee (이병화) and researcher Chae-yoon Lee (이채윤) of Shinhan Investment & Securities said the global remittance market is entering a transition period in which it is rapidly moving to blockchain-based rails. They cited "global network", "strong business experience within traditional finance" and "regulatory response and licensing" as key elements of the stablecoin market. They said only a handful of local payment service providers in Asia have standardized blockchain settlement infrastructure, calling it an environment favorable to Hecto Group.

On Hecto Financial, the report stressed its leading position in global stablecoin payment and settlement infrastructure.

The report said Hecto Financial joined Circle, a global stablecoin issuer, as an official partner of CPN (Circle Payments Network) on Feb. 3, the first South Korean company to do so. It also said the company proved operational stability and technical integration of a payment and settlement structure using stablecoins within the CPN environment.

It said the cross-border foreign-currency settlement service has achieved annual growth of more than 200 percent since its launch in 2023, and that linking with CPN could enable structural growth through the pace of growth and scalability of its existing business through 2030. It viewed positively that the company is "leading the establishment of a working system and commercialization on global standard infrastructure" by joining as the first domestic CPN partner.

On Hecto Innovation, the report highlighted its push to build a wallet-centered B2C platform. It described a digital-asset wallet as "a new financial account in stablecoins and a means of recording transaction data across industries beyond finance." It also said that because "a wallet can be transferred only between acquired wallets, securing the number of wallets opened early is key," underscoring a first-mover effect.

Byung-hwa Lee said he expects a wallet infrastructure revenue model that creates fixed financial costs through "wallet creation, customer identification and approval technology." He also expects the development of a B2C platform in which services spread to group company service users through a subsidiary payment network and further connect with end-demand users.

The report said Hecto Wallet One, a unit of Hecto Innovation, is a wallet infrastructure company that is securing a gateway for the movement of virtual-asset funds based on a virtual asset service provider (VASP) license. It said about 40 percent of domestic VASP companies use Hecto Wallet One infrastructure and that it has 170,000 total subscribers to virtual-asset wallets, the largest number of users among personal wallets.

About 100 people, including institutional investors, attended a company briefing held on Sunday. A Hecto Innovation official said at the briefing that the company will combine its subsidiary Hecto Financial's global payment network with the group's member infrastructure and pursue a wallet business centered on actual use. The official stressed that it will create a strong lock-in effect for cross-border financial end-demand segments such as foreign workers with high demand for stablecoin use, and that it will continue to preempt the wallet market, an essential gateway in the stablecoin financial ecosystem, based on its VASP license and technological capabilities.