South Korea's Woori Financial Teams up with Kakao's Crypto Payments Group

Woori Financial Group, one of South Korea's largest banking companies, has agreed to work with Ground X in developing blockchain financial services.

Group Chairman Chairman Son Tae-seung made the announcement on the 21st at the company's headquarters in central Seoul, some reports said. Further detail appeared in Shin-A Ilbo, CoinDesk Korea, and other publications.

Under the agreement, the two will codevelop relevant services. Few specifics were reported, and group officials were quoted as saying that details are still being worked out, but Woori Card payment and settlement were mentioned in some of the stories. Woori Card is a credit card subsidiary of the group.

The group did say that the agreement does not involve the use of cryptocurrencies.

Ground X, which was formed in 2018, is a subsidiary of Kakao, a messaging-to-mobility tech company and Korea's 36th largest conglomerate. Ground X and the parent company, which has $8.8 billion in assets, earlier this month quietly introduced Klip, a crypto wallet that will utilize Klaytn, Ground X's public blockchain.

Ground X is becoming increasingly popular with major companies in South Korea as they rush to build out their blockchain offerings and race to lead in the technology. It has been used by the SK Group, the third largest chaebol, in developing a blockchain-based donation platform, while Terra is using Klaytn in the development of its payment platform. Just last week, Ground X teamed up with Shinhan Bank and Hexlant to develop a private key management system for the financial group.

Woori has been reasonably busy in terms of blockchain-related development. Last month, it was announced that Woori along with KEB Hana Bank, the country's three telephone companies, Samsung Electronics and Koscom, would be jointly developing a blockchain platform for personal identification. In early 2018, Woori Bank tested Ripple for overseas remittances.

But compared to Shinhan, which has been pursing blockchain initiatives from gold bar verification to securities lending, Woori has been much less active.

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