Crypto Push In Korea: Hana Financial And Standard Chartered Unveil New Deal
One of the biggest South Korean monetary conglomerates has partenerd up with a serious UK-based international financial institution to deepen cooperation in international finance and crypto property.
A Transnational Crypto Deal
Incumbents are eager to not be left behind on the crypto curve, a lot in order that a few of them are actually becoming a member of forces. That appears to be the case for Hana Financial Group and Standard Chartered Group as on March fifteenth they introduced the signing of a MOU (memorandum of understanding). By teaming up, the 2 lenders goal to show stablecoins and different digital property into a brand new development engine alongside their current worldwide banking enterprise.
According to The Korea Times, the signing ceremony occurred at Hana’s Bank’s headquarters on March thirteenth. It was attended by Ham Young-joo, Chairman of Hana Financial Group, and Bill Winters, CEO of Standard Chartered Group. Seoul Economic Daily reports that Ham and Winters exchanged views on cooperation in international and digital property. Chairman Ham said that:
The partnership between Hana Financial Group and Standard Chartered Group, leveraging their in depth international networks and various monetary know-how, will function a powerful aggressive edge within the international monetary sector. We will create new development alternatives by producing synergies in future monetary domains, together with digital property.
Winters emphasised on the capital significance that South Korea has in Asian monetary markets, concerning the nation as a “key hub”.
Shared Goals
The MOU covers stablecoins, deposit-token experiments, and future tokenized devices, tying in Hana’s home stablecoin plans and pilots.
The Seoul Economic Daily contextualizes this transfer with Chairman Ham views of stablecoins as “core future enterprise”. His objective with Hana Financial factors to the constructing of an “ecosystem encompassing the issuance, distribution, use and circulation of (won-denominated steady) cash”, as he said in his New Year’s tackle in January. In 2024, Hana Bank, BitGo, and SK Telecom arrange BitGo Korea because the native arm centered on institutional crypto custody. In 2025, the Korean lender had an all-time high web revenue of ₩4 trillion.
Standard Chartered already has a rising crypto footprint, from institutional custody companies to pilots with tokenized bonds and different blockchain-based property. The financial institution has additionally backed a number of stablecoin ventures in markets like Hong Kong.
This isn’t the primary time Hana Bank and Standard Chartered group up. In December 2025, the UK-based international financial institution introduced that it was facilitating Hana Securities first enterprise with digital property.
A Crypto Race
Instead of chasing pure spot publicity, the South Korea’s big banks are now racing to build compliant rails around stablecoins, tokenized notes, and digital bonds that may plug straight into the regulated monetary system, nudging the market away from retail hypothesis towards extra structured company and banking participation.
This new deal marks one other milestone within the newest wave of efforts by TradFi establishments to maintain up with a quickly evolving digital monetary system.
Cover picture from Perplexity, BTCUSD chart from Tradingview
