- Toss Bank signs the first MOU between a South Korean digital bank and the Solana Foundation.
- Partnership starts with proof of concept for Solana-based global remittance infrastructure.
- Stablecoins are the primary focus, with plans to expand into payments and tokenized assets.
Toss Bank, South Korea’s third-largest internet-only bank with 15 million customers, signed a strategic memorandum of understanding with the Solana Foundation in Seoul on June 19, marking the first direct one-to-one partnership between a South Korean digital bank and the Solana Foundation.
The agreement was signed at Toss Bank’s Sinnonhyeon office in Seocho-dong, Seoul, with Park Jin-hyeon, head of strategy at Toss Bank, and Lily Liu, chair of the Solana Foundation, signing on behalf of their respective organizations.
What They Are Building
The partnership begins with a proof of concept to test whether Solana’s high-speed blockchain network can support global remittance and settlement infrastructure at a commercial banking scale. The initial focus is on stablecoins as a mechanism for reducing the cost and settlement time of overseas transfers, a pain point for the millions of Koreans sending money internationally.
Three specific areas of cooperation are outlined in the agreement:
- A proof of concept for Solana-based global remittance and settlement infrastructure
- A joint review of blockchain-based payment and settlement models
- An assessment of next-generation financial services built on stablecoins and digital assets, including tokenized assets
The Bigger Plan
Toss Bank is not treating this as a standalone experiment. The bank plans to verify step by step whether blockchain infrastructure can be applied across its existing financial services, starting with overseas remittances and expanding progressively into payments and digital assets as feasibility is confirmed.
Park Jin-hyeon described the partnership as a starting point for gradually embedding blockchain-based digital financial infrastructure into services the bank already operates. The timing is deliberate, with South Korea actively working on domestic stablecoin legislation that will shape how banks can deploy digital asset infrastructure at scale.
Why Solana
Users and supporters said that Solana’s architecture offers transaction speeds and costs that are considerably more favorable for high-volume remittance use cases than most competing blockchains. For a bank processing millions of customer transactions, the throughput capacity and low fee structure make it a practical choice for the proof of concept phase rather than a purely speculative partnership.
Lily Liu said the Solana Foundation expects the partnership to demonstrate how high-performance blockchain infrastructure can serve mainstream financial institutions looking to upgrade cross-border payment capabilities.
Related: South Korea Plans to Open Overseas Crypto Transfers to Fintech Firms
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