South Korea is preparing to resume real-value testing of tokenized bank deposits as early as September, expanding Project Hangang from a payment-infrastructure trial toward a broader test of consumer features, merchant acceptance and government disbursements.
The timetable is conditional. Yonhap reported on July 20, citing the Bank of Korea, that the central bank and participating commercial banks were completing system development and preparing to recruit users. Testing could begin in September if that work remains on schedule.
Nine banks and a wider payment test
The second phase is expected to include nine banks, up from seven in the first phase. Kyongnam Bank and iM Bank are set to join KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori, NH NongHyup, Industrial Bank of Korea and Busan Bank.
Project Hangang uses a wholesale central bank digital currency as the settlement asset behind deposit tokens issued by commercial banks. Consumers interact with the bank-issued tokens rather than holding a direct retail liability of the central bank. That distinction matters: the pilot preserves commercial banks’ role in customer-facing money while testing whether tokenized settlement can support new payment functions.
The planned features include peer-to-peer transfers, biometric authentication, simplified enrollment and automated movement of funds into and out of deposit tokens. Participating banks are also expected to add merchants with which they have commercial agreements, broadening acceptance beyond the representative outlets assembled centrally for the first phase.
Government payments add a programmability test
The more consequential addition for payment operators is a planned test involving government funds. South Korean authorities intend to use deposit tokens for part of an electric-vehicle charging infrastructure subsidy program. Selected recipients would open token wallets to receive the funds.
Because the tokens can carry rules governing where and when money may be used, the test is designed to examine whether eligibility and spending restrictions can be enforced within the payment instrument. A separate proposal would test tokenized payments for public-sector operating expenses after coordination with the finance ministry.
For payment providers, this shifts the pilot beyond basic wallet acceptance. Programmable public funds require reliable controls around wallet onboarding, transaction authorization, merchant classification, expiry conditions, exception handling and reconciliation. Those operational layers will determine whether tokenization reduces administrative work or simply moves it into a new technical stack.
What the first phase established
The first real-value phase ran from April through June 2025. Yonhap reported that about 81,000 wallet users completed 114,880 deposit-token transactions. Those figures show that the system was exercised by consumers, but they do not by themselves establish commercial demand, production readiness or cost savings.
The next phase is therefore best understood as an expanded pilot rather than a product launch. Its significance lies in the combination of bank-issued digital money, central-bank settlement and more complex payment use cases. The conditional September start, the limited test population and the continuing policy debate over won-denominated stablecoins all remain important constraints.
If the second phase proceeds as described, Project Hangang will give banks and payment companies a closer look at how tokenized deposits behave across issuance, consumer transfers, merchant acceptance and restricted-purpose public payments. The practical evidence will come from execution: enrollment completion, acceptance reliability, control failures, refund handling and settlement operations—not from the token format alone.