Turning a Popular Cashback Card Into Blockchain Money
Naver Financial has quietly finished building a stablecoin wallet that will convert Busan’s Dongbaek-jeon—a
prepaid payment card—into actual tokens on a blockchain. City officials launched Dongbaek-jeon back in 2019
to help local businesses by offering shoppers five to ten percent instant cashback. The program caught on fast.
Today, about 1.5 million people use it every month—nearly half of everyone who lives in Busan—and billions
of won flow through the system each quarter.
Moving to a stablecoin changes everything about how the money moves. Right now, settlements happen in big
batches at the end of each day. With blockchain, payments clear almost instantly. The city saves money on
processing fees, and they can do clever things with rewards—like boosting cashback in specific neighborhoods
during festivals or targeting promotions to certain events.
Venture firm Hashed and the Busan Digital Asset Exchange are building the blockchain infrastructure underneath.
Naver is plugging the new wallet straight into Naver Pay, the super-app millions of Koreans already use.
Early testers say a “convert” button shows up next to their regular money, letting them mint or cash out
Dongbaek-jeon tokens instantly at one-to-one. When you pay with a QR code, the merchant gets an on-chain
confirmation in seconds that syncs automatically with their bookkeeping software—no more waiting around or
paying clearing fees.
Waiting on Regulators, But Naver Has the Muscle to Pull This Off
The technology is ready to go. What’s holding things up is South Korea’s government, which is still writing
the rules for city-backed stablecoins. Draft legislation making the rounds in the National Assembly would
require these tokens to be backed one hundred percent by real cash sitting in domestic banks, with quarterly
audits sent to the Financial Services Commission. BNK Busan Bank—the institution that issues Dongbaek-jeon
today—should be able to meet those requirements. The question is whether the final rules will allow people
to send tokens across borders or earn interest on their holdings.
If any company can work through the red tape, it’s Naver. Last year they processed more than 30 trillion won
in digital payments. In the third quarter alone, they pulled in 3.14 trillion won in revenue—roughly
2.3 billion USD—with operating profit over 570 billion won. That kind of scale and balance sheet makes
regulators comfortable that the system won’t blow up. Hashed’s enterprise tools add the audit trails that
lawmakers want to see. If everything clears as expected, Busan could flip the switch within weeks and become
the first major city in the G20 to get everyday people using a local stablecoin at scale.
Bigger Ambitions: A Mega-Merger and Korea’s Crypto Craze
This wallet launch is happening right as Naver is rumored to be eyeing a stock-swap merger with Dunamu,
the company behind Upbit. Upbit controls about seventy percent of all crypto trading in Korea. Put Naver’s
25 million users together with Upbit’s liquidity, and you’ve got a monster—especially if they’re planning
a U.S. stock listing down the road. A smooth Dongbaek-jeon rollout would prove the combined company can
handle stablecoin payments, NFT ticketing, and crypto on-ramps all under one roof. That kind of proof-of-concept
could seriously bump up the valuation when they go public.
Korean retail investors aren’t slowing down either. During this year’s Chuseok holiday—when local stock
markets were closed for a week—they poured about 1.24 billion USD into U.S. tech and crypto stocks.
Leveraged Tesla and Bitcoin mining ETFs led the charge. Brokers say people are betting on a weaker won,
falling chip inventories, and the hope that the Federal Reserve might ease up, all of which could push
risk assets higher into year-end.
If Busan’s stablecoin experiment works, it might pull some of that speculative energy back home. People
could keep their money local while still tapping into the broader crypto world. That’s a win for the
city, for merchants, and for anyone tired of watching their savings chase volatile assets halfway around
the globe.
