TLDR Tech / Crypto
Bank of Korea Scales Up CBDC Pilot With Half a Million Users
The Bank of Korea is launching Phase 2 of its CBDC pilot in September, scaling from 81,000 wallets across seven banks to a 500,000-user cap with nine participating institutions and an open-ended timeline. Phase 1 (April-June 2025) processed 114,880 transactions across 12,000 merchants, though only 42% of wallet holders actively spent tokens despite 30-35 billion won in bank infrastructure investment. Phase 2 adds biometric approvals, P2P transfers, recurring payments, and interest payments, and will test programmable tokens for government subsidy disbursements with built-in spending restrictions. On a two-tier structure where the Bank of Korea issues wholesale CBDC to commercial banks that distribute deposit tokens to consumers, the programmable token capability has drawn criticism because every transaction creates logged records accessible to central authorities.
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