Key Takeaways
- Dunamu and Visa signed a stablecoin and AI payments partnership on Aug. 27 in San Francisco.
- The deal explores Open USD, a stablecoin already backed by Visa, Mastercard and more than 140 companies.
- Dunamu CEO Oh Kyung-seok says rollout will phase in through late 2026 pending regulatory approval.
Upbit’s Parent Company Teams up With a Global Payments Giant
Executives from Dunamu and Visa met in San Francisco to formalize a partnership covering stablecoin payments, cross-border remittances and AI-integrated financial infrastructure. Dunamu CEO Oh Kyung-seok said the companies will explore how “AI, stablecoins, and tokenization” can connect digital assets with existing financial systems, describing the deal as a bridge between South Korea’s largest crypto exchange operator and one of the world’s biggest payment networks.
Visa’s Group President for Global Markets, Oliver Jenkyn, attended the announcement alongside Oh. The two companies said they will also explore agentic commerce, AI systems that can search, purchase and settle payments on a user’s behalf, an area Visa has been building out through moves like its recent OpenAI tie-up.
No product launch date was given. Instead, the companies said stablecoin payment services and remittance corridors would roll out in phases, pending relevant regulations and compliance requirements.
The Open USD Question
Central to the deal is Open USD (OUSD), a dollar-pegged stablecoin backed by a consortium that already counts Visa, Mastercard, Blackrock and 140 companies among its members. The project plans to let participating firms mint OUSD by depositing dollars into a reserve account and redeem it without fees, positioning it as a challenger to incumbents Tether (USDT) and Circle’s USDC.
Dunamu’s relationship with OUSD has been unusually public. In July, Dunamu and Samsung Electronics said they had never agreed to join the consortium after being listed as founding participants, a dispute that briefly clouded the credibility of the OUSD launch.
Posturing OUSD as something the companies are now “considering,” rather than a settled commitment, means Dunamu is treading carefully.
Betting on Korea’s Stablecoin Boom
The Visa deal adds to a busy year for Dunamu, given that the exchange operator is also working with Hana Financial Group, which agreed in May to buy a 6.55% stake in Dunamu for roughly $670 million, on a won-pegged stablecoin built on its in-house Giwa blockchain. Samsung SDS has separately discussed stablecoin infrastructure and AI-based payment models with the company.
Dunamu itself is in the process of merging with Naver Financial, the fintech arm of internet giant Naver, through a stock swap expected to close by September, ahead of a planned stock listing.
Visa, meanwhile, has pushed its own stablecoin settlement rails to a $7 billion annualized run rate across nine blockchain networks, and recently launched a platform offering Open USD for banks and crypto firms to issue and manage stablecoins. Partnering with Dunamu gives Visa a foothold in South Korea just as local banks and tech firms race to define what a won-denominated, regulator-approved stablecoin looks like.
That expansion is unfolding as capital keeps rotating into digital-asset infrastructure more broadly, as bitcoin’s price has steadied around $80,000.
