South Korea Eyes Blockchain Technology for FinTech Plans
The newest addition to the blockchain community craze is, unsurprisingly, the technologically advanced country of South Korea. The South Korean Financial Services Commission (FSC) has voiced plans to provide impetus to the use of blockchain technology in order to better safeguard user information in new payment systems.
Korea has big dreams for its fintech industry, and the Financial Services Commission (FSC) is planning to use new payment systems, communication technologies, and blockchain technology to realize them. The FSC unveiled a plan on Tuesday, March 20 to change regulations to encourage the FinTech industry to take advantage of new technologies.
Finance Body to Introduce Blockchain for Banks
The FSC is set to overturn the existing regulations for banks and insurance companies and ease the entire process to protect customer data and remove the complexities of the verification processes with blockchain solutions, states Korea’s JoongAng Daily.
Speaking about the blockchain-friendly approach to journalists, the FSC Chairman said:
“The players in the financial service market are becoming more diverse, with new companies entering, and the competition in the financial market is becoming fiercer… FinTech is an area that requires new technologies, and it will solve the youth job problem by increasing job positions for young people.”
As a feature of its FinTech guide, the FSC will likewise permit more small and medium-sized organizations to get more customer information through digital payment systems. Regulators trust this move will rouse new products and services in the prospering FinTech segment.
To ease the user experience and enable them to make purchases from sellers via apps, the government plans to approve a more accessible payment system called “app-to-app” eliminating payment of fees to credit card companies or card network providers. Banks, however, will still charge customers with fees.
For instance, a PayPal-supported startup called Toss has been trying different things with app-to-app payment alternatives for Korean clients in Seoul and Jeju since July 2017. The firm included support for mobile bitcoin transactions in 2017.
Local regulations may soon issue new and more lenient cryptocurrency regulations for initial coin offerings, states The Korean Times. They were, however, banned in the Korean country in September 2017.
South Korea Steadily Preparing Cryptocurrency Regulations
Earlier in January 2018, South Korea’s Financial Services Commission confirmed that they are preparing a regulatory framework with regards to cryptocurrency. In the same month, the regulator published a document that called for cryptocurrency trading to be only be allowed from “real-name” bank accounts. The rules enabled banks to comply with their KYC AML (know your customer, anti-money laundering) obligations, the document said.
