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Bank of Korea expands CBDC pilot to 500,000 users in September
Phase 2 will add biometric approvals, person-to-person transfers, and programmable government subsidy disbursements after Phase 1 ran April to June 2025 with 114,880 transactions across 81,000 wallets.
The Bank of Korea will launch Phase 2 of its central bank digital currency pilot, Project Hangang, in September, expanding to nine banks and targeting up to 500,000 users for live deposit token testing, according to Decrypt.
In Phase 1, which ran from April to June 2025, the program opened 81,000 wallets and recorded 114,880 transactions, with only 42% of wallet holders spending anything during the pilot, Decrypt reported.
Phase 2 is designed to make the CBDC experience closer to regular banking. New functionality includes biometric fingerprint approvals, person-to-person transfers, automatic top-ups from linked bank accounts, recurring auto-payments, cash receipt generation, and interest payments.
For the first time, the pilot will also test government subsidy disbursements using programmable tokens, Decrypt said. The central bank is issuing a wholesale CBDC for interbank settlement, while commercial banks create deposit tokens that consumers and merchants can use for payments.