Bank of Korea launches Phase 2 of digital won pilot with real subsidies

The Bank of Korea has kicked off Phase 2 of Project Hangang, expanding its digital won pilot to nine banks and, for the first time, using CBDC-linked deposit tokens for real government subsidy payments.

The Bank of Korea (BOK) officially launched the second phase of Project Hangang on Wednesday, its flagship initiative to build a blockchain-based payments and settlement infrastructure using wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) and commercial bank deposit tokens. The expansion marks a pivotal step forward for South Korea’s digital currency ambitions, broadening the project from seven to nine participating commercial banks and introducing live government subsidy disbursement for the first time.

Phase 2, formally dubbed “Project Hangang Phase 2,” adds Kyongnam Bank and iM Bank to the original seven institutions — KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Woori, Hana, NH Nonghyup, IBK Industrial, and BNK Busan Bank. The project is being conducted jointly with the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service, and covers real-scenario testing of deposit tokens across two critical use cases: government subsidy distribution and nationwide consumer payment and transfer services.

Phase 1 of Project Hangang, which ran for approximately three months beginning in April 2025, onboarded up to 100,000 participants and recorded 118,000 payment test transactions, validating that a deposit-token-based payment and settlement system could operate stably in a live environment. However, the pilot exposed significant friction: while 100,000 citizens were invited to participate, only around 80,000 actually opened digital wallets, and total payment volume reached just 692.46 million won — modest figures that prompted banks, which had collectively spent approximately 30–35 billion won building the underlying infrastructure, to raise concerns about commercialisation viability.

The BOK has addressed those gaps directly in Phase 2. New features include biometric authentication via fingerprint for payment approval, direct peer-to-peer transfers between digital wallets, and an automatic top-up function that converts funds from a linked bank account into deposit tokens when a wallet balance runs low. The BOK framed the improvements as meaningful steps toward usability parity with existing electronic payment systems.

One of the most consequential additions in Phase 2 is the integration of government subsidy disbursement. South Korea’s government distributes vast sums through social welfare programs — a BOK representative has noted that Project Hangang is designed to enhance fiscal efficiency by reducing misuse and cutting administrative costs associated with the current system of credit cards, locally issued vouchers, and bank accounts. The government is exploring allocating a portion of its $499 billion budget via CBDC-linked distribution infrastructure, making the subsidy pilot a test case with implications well beyond retail payments.

The BOK was careful to frame the project’s ambitions modestly. In its announcement, it described the digital currency being tested as “an intermediate stage between a CBDC and stablecoins,” and emphasised that Project Hangang is not premised on the immediate introduction of a full retail CBDC, but rather a real-transaction test of how public financial infrastructure could function in a digital environment. For commercial banks, the BOK added, it would be “an opportunity to try using it in advance in preparation for the possibility of future institutionalization.”

Large-scale follow-up real transactions with all nine banks are planned for the second half of 2026, with a stated objective of reducing payment fees for small business owners and building financial infrastructure connected to new industries — including AI-based automatic payments. LG CNS, which built the underlying technical infrastructure for Phase 1, remains a core systems partner.

The launch comes weeks after the BOK separately published a report in February 2026 urging regulators to restrict early issuance of won-backed stablecoins to licensed commercial banks, citing money laundering and financial stability risks — a stance that reinforces Seoul’s preference for a controlled, bank-led path to digital currency adoption rather than the open-access model seen in some other jurisdictions.