The Bank of Korea is preparing to move its CBDC pilot into live transaction testing with nine commercial banks in September. The next phase would shift the project from controlled testing toward real settlement activity between participating institutions.
The pilot will use Bank of Korea infrastructure while commercial banks handle deposit-token business flows. A BOK official said the second phase is intended to lay groundwork for commercialization, keeping the project focused on bank-based settlement rather than a public retail launch.
Deposit Tokens Move Into Real Settlement Testing
The participating group is expected to include major lenders such as KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana and Woori Financial Group, alongside regional banks including Gyeongnam Bank and iM Bank. That would expand the pilot to a broader banking base as the central bank tests operational use cases.
The structure gives South Korea a controlled environment for testing tokenized bank deposits. Commercial banks can experiment with deposit-token activity while the central bank provides the settlement infrastructure underneath the system.
That distinction matters because live transaction testing is more meaningful than simulation alone. Actual value movement can expose operational issues around settlement timing, reconciliation, system resilience and bank-level integration that closed lab tests may not reveal.
Public Digital Won Launch Is Not Confirmed
The September plan does not mean a digital won is being released broadly to the public. The project remains a pilot, and the current information does not fully define user eligibility, transaction caps or the exact business processes each bank will test.
The move also fits South Korea’s broader exploration of CBDCs, deposit tokens and won-based stablecoin policy. Reuters reported in 2025 that the BOK was preparing a second CBDC pilot with major commercial banks after its earlier joint work with the Bank for International Settlements.
The key development is the shift toward live bank transaction testing in September. The next useful indicators will be final participant confirmation, transaction rules, settlement limits, deposit-token use cases and whether the pilot creates a practical path toward commercial deployment.
