What PYUSD Suggests for KRW Stablecoin Adoption

Korea's Already-Efficient Simple Payment Stack, Is There Room for a KRW Stablecoin?

Naver Pay, KakaoPay, and Toss Pay run on prepaid balances. Does that leave any room for a stablecoin? In "Blockchain Guidebook for Korean Institutions 2026," 100y (Four Pillars) says no. Prepaid balance payments are "already efficient, with only one intermediary between users and merchants," so swapping the prepaid balance for a stablecoin while still settling merchants in fiat leaves "minimal" gains in cost and speed. Users have almost no reason to abandon existing payment methods, and on the merchant side, card competition is focused on user acquisition rather than merchant capture, while the prepaid layer itself is already lean. The report puts it directly, "stablecoin payments face an uphill battle against Korea's mature payment industry."

The PYUSD Case (PayPal)

PayPal launched PYUSD on Ethereum in August 2023 as the first regulated dollar stablecoin from a US payment giant. Total supply peaked at ~$4.2B in February 2026 and currently sits at ~$2.6B. The yellow line shows monthly on-chain transfer volume on the same chart, reaching $55.3B by April 2026. The existing PayPal Balance was "trapped inside PayPal's closed loop. It only works with PayPal merchants, and withdrawing it means navigating complex banking processes." PYUSD broke that, since users can "withdraw on-chain and use it across DeFi services or for payments in products that have nothing to do with PayPal." Smart contract integration extends it. PYUSD "connects to on-chain investment products, enables micropayment streaming, and makes reward distribution easier," letting PayPal "move beyond its closed system and build a broader global financial network." The supply curve and the transfer volume line are what that bet has produced so far.

The Question for Korea

The chart hands Korea a different question than whether to copy PayPal. The choice is between treating stablecoins as a cheaper payment rail or as the underlying asset for a broader network. The cheaper-rail path is closed off because prepaid systems are already optimized and users have no reason to switch. The other path opens up once stablecoins are seen as the asset that anchors a network rather than a cost-cutting tool. The report makes the case directly, since "banks, card companies, and payment firms have all competed by building proprietary ecosystems" and "stablecoins may be the best form of money for exactly that purpose." The PYUSD supply curve and transfer volume line show what that approach has produced over 33 months. The question for Korea isn't whether transaction volume exists, since the report already confirms ~₩1.04T per day in H1 2025 simple payment activity. The deciding variable is whether KakaoPay, Naver Pay, or a domestic bank will give up closed-loop control in exchange for the open-loop network effects PYUSD has been accumulating. The report lands in the same place, "If stablecoin adoption turns existing financial system inefficiencies into real improvements for customers and merchants, adoption will follow naturally, and stablecoin payments will come with it."