Bank of Korea and regulators sign CBDC and tokenized deposit trial agreement

The Bank of Korea announced that it has signed a cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Science and Information Communication Technology (MSIT) and the Financial Services Commission (FSC) to jointly test the availability of digital currencies (CBDCs) and tokenized deposits. The central bank plans to pilot tokenized deposits among 100,000 people by the end of the year, and enable interbank settlement through a wholesale CBDC. In this trial, seven domestic banks will participate, and tokenized deposits will be covered by the existing deposit insurance system. In addition, the central bank has developed a digital voucher platform to reduce the complexity and fraud risk of paper voucher settlement.