MoonPay has officially launched MoonPay Korea as it looks to make South Korea a base for expanding its business across Asia. The company plans to combine its global payment and stablecoin systems with services from Korean financial institutions and companies, focusing on overseas remittances, payments, settlements, and the global distribution of digital assets. MoonPay says it has processed more than $45 billion and has over 32 million verified users, with more than 1,500 onboarding and transaction partners over the past 12 months.
MoonPay Korea will focus on adapting those services to the local market, including customer verification, payments, settlements, customer protection, won deposits and withdrawals, and local payment methods. The company plans to work with Korean financial institutions and platforms and expand its services gradually after meeting the required virtual asset filings, licenses and registrations. Lee Bu-geon, MoonPay’s co-founder and Asia-Pacific head, said the company sees South Korea’s large on-chain transaction market and developed financial sector as a strong base for its wider Asian expansion.
korea mode 🇰🇷 https://t.co/KWqNLF1U5R
— MoonPay 🟣 (@moonpay) September 29, 2026
Why do foreign crypto firms often need local banks to enter Korea?
MoonPay chose to partner with local institutions rather than applying for its own license, as a realistic option for a foreign firm entering Korea. Korea’s Virtual Asset Service Provider registration count has actually shrunk, from 29 approved companies in December 2021 to just 27 by January 2026. Only two new VASPs were approved in all of 2025, and the average review now takes about 16 months, with one applicant waiting more than 600 days for an answer.
Binance and OKX both worked around that bottleneck by buying into or investing in local operators that already held registration, rather than applying fresh. It took until August 2026 for any foreign crypto company to break through directly at all, when BitGo Korea became the first global digital asset firm to build a new Korean entity from scratch and win VASP registration on its own, backed by 25% ownership from Hana Financial Group and 10% from SK Telecom.
MoonPay’s approach fits the pattern nearly everyone else follows, since building a stablecoin and remittance business through direct licensing alone has become a little difficult on a reasonable timeline.
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Moonpay enters Korea’s growing won stablecoin competition
The market MoonPay is chasing already has competition lining up. KRWQ, described as the world’s first non dollar stablecoin, listed on EDX Markets with combined spot and derivatives trading.
Ripple partnered with Korea’s Kyobo Life to pilot tokenized government bond settlement using Ripple’s custody technology, aiming to compress the usual two day settlement window toward something closer to real time. Separately, eight of Korea’s largest banks, including KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Woori and NongHyup, have been organizing their own joint venture to issue a shared won stablecoin together rather than compete bank by bank.
MoonPay’s bet is that it needs to become the infrastructure layer everyone else’s token moves through once it crosses a border, the same role it’s built for dollar stablecoins in 180 countries already.
Notably, MoonPay announced a strategic investment of approximately KRW 110 billion ($76 million) in Finger, a first-generation South Korean fintech pioneer. The deal, executed alongside Sungho Electronics and Pantos Holdings, aims to integrate MoonPay’s global payment rails with Finger’s domestic financial software network to commercialize stablecoin-based corporate settlements.
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