Toss and Toss Bank sign strategic MOU with Circle on stablecoin payments infrastructure
Circle’s exploratory agreements with Kakao Group companies and Toss entities focus on stablecoin payments and remittances in South Korea as the country advances legal frameworks for won-denominated stablecoins.
Circle said July 23 it signed separate memorandums of understanding with Kakao Group — Kakao, Kakao Pay and Kakao Bank — and with Viva Republica, Toss and Toss Bank to explore stablecoin payments, blockchain settlement and digital-asset infrastructure in South Korea. The companies are examining domestic and cross-border remittance and payment services using USDC and other tokens as South Korea advances legal frameworks for won-denominated stablecoins. At a Seoul briefing, Circle Chief Strategy Officer Dante Disparte said South Korea could benefit from being a second mover on crypto regulation by studying frameworks in the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom while building technology infrastructure in parallel. The agreements are exploratory and cover areas including stablecoin payments, cross-border remittances, merchant settlement, digital wallets, USDC-linked services, programmable onchain payments and links between bank accounts, fiat payment networks and blockchain systems; no products or launch timeline were disclosed.
- USDC: Circle’s dollar-pegged digital token used in blockchain-based payments and settlement.
- MiCA: The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework for regulating crypto firms and services.
- agentic economy: A concept described by Circle in which AI agents can autonomously make payments using stablecoins.