OmiseGo Partners with South Korea’s Largest Credit Card Company
In a press release from April 5, 2018, Omise and OmiseGO (OMG) announced their signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ShinhanCard, a major South Korean credit card company. The deal is part of the company’s long-term plan, which sees itself at the center of a blockchain revolution in Asia.
Moving Digital Value Globally
Known better by its token offering OMG, a decentralized scaling solution network based on Ethereum, the parent company Omise is payment solution platform based in Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia.
The MoU helps bring ShihanCard’s payments platform to Southeast Asia and Japan, along with a decentralized payment solution that Omise provides. The platform shall be available on all devices and would use OmiseGo’s publicly accessible server.
Speaking in South Korea, Omise CEO Jun Hasegawa stated:
“Omise and OmiseGO are working to revolutionize the way digital value moves globally, with an end goal of creating a platform that facilitates a decentralized economy.”
Roadmap yet to Be Released
Apart from the press release, Omise’s exact role and service offering in this deal is yet to be known. However, Shinhan has made its intention clear to implement Omise’s blockchain technology in the bank’s different departments.
Furthermore, it is expected that Shinhan’s credit card subsidiary Shinhancard, would use the blockchain to develop different business models and search for new use cases in collaboration with OmiseGo. Following this partnership, the company is Asia’s first significant credit card business to partner with, and apply a blockchain-based offering.
In the statement, Omise added that they would also process Shinhan’s FAN card and conduct all overseas merchant transactions by helping the bank set up merchant accounts using the OmiseGo blockchain. The move is “under the business strategy of ‘hyper-connected management,” according to a Shinhan Card official.
“The MoU establishes a framework for closer collaboration between each party; leveraging Omise’s broad portfolio of payment technology and solutions, and OmiseGO’s server and mobile SDKs that have been made publicly available for the purpose of onboarding e-wallet providers,” said Omise’s Team.
Omise to Collaborate on Shinhan’s Wallet Service
In November 2017, Shinhan said that it was testing a bitcoin platform wherein the private keys of bitcoin addresses and wallets would be managed and issued by the bank. In an innovative model, the bank would provide the vault service for free and charge a fee for withdrawals.
By virtue of this MoU, Omise’s development team could collaborate with the bank’s bitcoin wallet team for development and implementation of the service.
In line with South Korea’s overall positive sentiment towards cryptocurrencies and blockchain businesses, Shinhan has been supporting a number of relevant initiatives.
In February 2018, the bank also announced that it had completed trials with Ripple Labs, utilizing the Ripple network and its liquidity system xRapid to send cross-border payments in a blockchain network.
