South Korea Scales Digital Won Pilot to 9 Banks and 500,000 Users from September After First Phase Showed 42% Wallet Usage

According to Bank of Korea, the central bank will expand Project Hangang to nine banks and up to 500,000 users from September, adding Gyeongnam Bank and iM Bank to the seven already participating.

The first phase, which ran from April to June 2025, opened 81,000 wallets with a 100,000-participant cap, but only 42% of wallets were used to spend tokens, processing 114,880 transactions. Banks incurred combined infrastructure costs of approximately 30 billion won (AU$29.02 million), according to the Human Rights Foundation's CBDC tracker.