Korean Banks Test Partior’s Global Rail as BOK Builds an AI-Payment Safety Net

For the first time, a Korean bank’s FX and remittance teams are running live flows on Partior, a global tokenised-deposit settlement network, while the Bank of Korea warns that AI-driven high-frequency micropayments and 24/7 cross-border payments are pressing against the limits of the current safety net.

On November 11, SOOHO.IO and Suhyup Bank launched Project Namsan Phase 2: for the first time, Korean banks will test FX remittance settlement on Partior. This is not paper study. FX and overseas-remittance teams at participating institutions run the full flow on a live international settlement network, from payment initiation to settlement finality, including the exception handling they would face in daily operations.

Partior is a multi-bank settlement network founded in 2021 by JPMorgan, DBS and Temasek. It is production-live in USD, EUR and SGD, using tokenised commercial bank deposits as the settlement asset, and is built on ISO 20022 so it fits existing FX operations. Korean won is not live on Partior today, but SOOHO.IO says a successful proof of concept would lay the groundwork for testing settlement flows that include a KRW leg. The same day, the Bank of Korea held its 2026 Payment Systems Conference under the theme “Payment Infrastructure Innovation and Policy Challenges in the Digital Finance Era.” Deputy Governor Assistant Chang Jung-soo warned that AI-agent-driven high-frequency micropayments and 24/7 cross-border payments keep emerging, and that the payment infrastructure and its protective safety net must be revisited.

1. Korean Banks Touch a Foreign Settlement Rail for the First Time

Project Namsan Phase 1 covered domestic payments and settlement in Korea. Phase 2 widens the scope to cross-border remittance using tokenised deposits. Suhyup Bank is the first Korean bank to join, and several other Korean financial institutions are in talks. The value is hands-on experience: Korean institutions work directly with an international settlement network that already carries real commercial volume, and build an internal evidence base ahead of any future regulatory change.

This stands in contrast to stablecoins. A tokenised deposit is a commercial bank deposit represented in a form that can move on a blockchain. It is not a newly issued stablecoin: it uses the bank deposit itself as the settlement asset, keeps the credit structure of the banking system, and delivers 24/7 real-time settlement. For Korean banks, this is a route to international settlement rails without issuing a stablecoin or introducing a new credit entity. The Bank of Korea’s Project Hangang Phase 2 focuses on domestic small-value payments, so the two efforts are complementary rather than duplicative.

2. The Central Bank Runs Two Tracks: A Unified Ledger and AI Stress Tests

At the conference, the Bank of Korea unveiled a concept for a unified-ledger platform where tokenised assets and money are traded and settled on a single ledger. This contrasts sharply with the Bank of England’s “synchronised settlement” route, which connects the existing central-bank payment system to external DLT asset platforms, targeting live use in 2028 with 18 institutions in testing. Both approaches keep central-bank money as the final settlement asset; only the technical path differs.

The more direct pressure comes from AI payments. Chang Jung-soo pointed out that the faster and more available payments become, the higher the cybersecurity cost and risk. If AI is to be used for anomaly detection, personal-data protection, data-sharing scope, system resilience and security management must be considered together. As international references, Project Agora (8 central banks and 40+ regulated institutions) and the Nexus project (linking real-time payment systems of India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, targeting launch in Q4 2027) are cross-border experiments Korea is already engaged in.

3. After the Binance Heist, the Central Bank Takes Stock

The background event amplified the urgency. After the $6.3B Binance hack, the Bank of Korea launched a “Survey on the Status of Financial Institutions’ Entry into the Virtual Asset Market,” covering 5 major banks and 13 securities firms. The questions simulate the impact of an attack on Korea’s largest exchange and a temporary trading halt, assessing the spillover to bank balance sheets and the broader financial system. The survey started a week before the hack; the incident sharpened its urgency.

The same week, the Waves network was rolled back to block height 5,481,020 after abnormally high-fee blocks were generated. Upbit and Bithumb immediately designated WAVES as a caution token and suspended deposits and withdrawals. The speed of Korean exchanges’ risk response is a live sample of what the central bank means when it discusses a cybersecurity paradigm for the AI era.

4. The Legislative Window: Stablecoin Issuance Rights and AI-Agent Liability

The Digital Asset Basic Act is in its final coordination stage. The FSC plans to submit the government draft to the National Assembly in November, and DPK lawmaker Lee Kang-il targets December passage. The draft covers issuance, distribution, disclosure and listing of virtual assets, and institutionalises won-denominated stablecoins for the first time: the fight between bank-led consortia (50%+1 shareholding) and an open model is the core tension. A 15-20% cap on major-shareholder stakes in exchanges with a 1-2 year grace period, strict liability for hacking incidents, and the obligation to hold actual assets are all in discussion.

AI-agent payment liability entered Korea’s legislative agenda for the first time. Attorney Park Jong-baek of Bae, Kim & Lee raised a legal-interpretation need: under certain conditions, an AI agent’s use of prepaid electronic payment instruments or stablecoins should be treated as an act carried out in accordance with the user’s own intent. Seo Na-yun, head of the FSC’s virtual assets division, responded that AI-agent liability and risk management should be reviewed across financial laws as a whole, rather than confined to a single licensed sector. The FSC also said it would amend parts of the Electronic Financial Transactions Act after the basic law lands, to clear the way for stablecoin payment services.

5. Conclusion: Korea’s Posture for Bringing the Won Onboard

Korea is taking a path different from Hong Kong and Japan: rather than rushing to issue its own stablecoin, it is putting bank teams on a global tokenised-deposit settlement network, connecting through “bank credit plus central-bank-money final settlement,” while legislation settles the stablecoin issuance right and AI-agent liability. The white paper Agentic Payments in Wholesale Finance that Deutsche Bank and Ant Digital Technologies published in Hong Kong on November 9 proposes “bounded agentic execution” and KYA verification, echoing the Bank of Korea’s caution on AI-payment safety nets.

For practitioners, two signals are worth tracking. First, part of won-stablecoin issuance will sit with bank-led consortia rather than exchanges and tech companies, and the window for regulators to revisit AI-agent payment liability moves in step with the basic-law legislation. Second, the roster of operators on cross-border tokenised-deposit settlement keeps expanding: several Korean financial institutions are in talks after Suhyup Bank, and the timing of a KRW settlement leg will determine whether Korea can replicate the “bank credit plus central-bank money” model at the global settlement layer before 2027.