How Stablecoins Became Payment Infrastructure [EastPoint: Seoul 2026]

Hong Seok-won, Partner at Hashed

After years of watching digital assets, I believe the industry has reached a decisive inflection point. Stablecoins were once viewed as a refuge from crypto-market volatility, or as a tool with meaning only inside exchanges. That has changed. Stablecoins are rapidly becoming core infrastructure for the global financial system. That is why EastPoint: Seoul 2026 chose the “stablecoin stack” as its second main theme.

The essence of that shift is efficiency. Cross-border remittances and business-to-business settlements have long been defined by inefficiency. Overseas payments routed through the SWIFT network, the global interbank messaging system, have required days and hefty intermediary fees. Stablecoins and smart contracts are changing that process into one that is real-time and low-cost. What matters is not the technology itself, but the real-world problems it solves.

The direction is clear from the moves of global payments companies. PayPal set off the trend by issuing its own stablecoin, PYUSD. Stripe acquired stablecoin platform Bridge. Visa and Mastercard have introduced stablecoins into their settlement networks. Shopify has moved early to expand USDC payments, and the logistics industry is embracing blockchain to improve trade-finance efficiency. I see this as a leap toward stablecoins becoming essential financial infrastructure, spanning everything from interest settlement on tokenized real-world assets, or RWAs, to supply-chain payments.

I believe the real potential of this infrastructure will be fully realized in the age of artificial intelligence. Before long, autonomous AI agents that make decisions and transact on their own will account for a meaningful share of economic activity. The problem is that existing payment rails were designed for humans. Card approvals, account verification and banking hours are familiar to people. For AI agents processing hundreds of transactions a second, they are critical bottlenecks.

Stablecoins, by contrast, operate 24 hours a day and settle in a programmable way without human intervention. I believe they will ultimately become the primary payment instrument for machine-to-machine, or M2M, transactions between AI agents. This will not be a case of AI relying on payment rails built for people. Instead, a single stack centered on stablecoins will support both. That is why we made AI a core subtopic within the broader theme of the stablecoin stack.

The shift in the regulatory paradigm is even more decisive. The U.S. has completed preparations to bring stablecoins into the regulated financial system through the GENIUS Act. Japan amended its Payment Services Act and moved early to allow issuance. South Korea is no exception. Authorities are speeding up work on the second phase of the Digital Asset Basic Act to clearly define who can issue and distribute digital assets. I believe the market is now asking a different question: not how to regulate digital assets, but how to use them.

Debate in South Korea is still under way. Even so, major financial firms and IT and fintech companies are exploring payment infrastructure built around won-pegged stablecoins and deposit tokens in a variety of ways. How won-linked and dollar-linked stablecoins coexist and compete in the South Korean market will be one of the most important questions to watch.

At EastPoint: Seoul 2025, held last year and co-hosted by Hashed, Bloomingbit and the Korea Economic Daily, South Korea’s four largest commercial banks — KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana and Woori — were joined by major securities firms in force. Global players including Mastercard, PayPal Ventures and Anchorage Digital also gathered in one place and spoke highly of the potential of South Korea’s blockchain infrastructure.

EastPoint: Seoul 2026, to be held on Sept. 28 at the Westin Seoul Parnas, will take an in-depth look at how stablecoins are being incorporated as a base layer of the traditional financial system. The event will run on a dual-track format that combines a main stage focused on broad public agendas with private business networking for key stakeholders. The digital-asset industry is no longer confined to a market centered on exchanges and tokens.

Hong Seok-won, Partner at Hashed