JB Financial sees foreign workers as key market for won-backed stablecoin

"To prepare for the next decade, we need to bring in DNA that doesn't exist inside the bank."

Park Jong-chun, executive vice president and head of AX and future growth at JB Financial Group, said in a recent interview at the group's headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul, that JB Financial has focused on strategic investment premised on business cooperation rather than simple financial returns. "We have been building a collaboration foundation across the entire digital asset infrastructure — wallets, custody and exchanges — to prepare a future growth portfolio," he said.

With the Digital Asset Basic Act on the horizon, alliances between traditional finance, fintech and the digital asset industry are accelerating. JB Financial plans to secure new growth engines through an "inorganic growth" strategy that absorbs the capabilities of outside innovators. Park also predicted that competition to build next-generation payment infrastructure — including digital wallets — will intensify as the spread of AI agents fundamentally reshapes how customers interact with financial services.

Park is one of the financial industry's leading digital finance specialists, overseeing JB Financial Group's digital transformation and future growth strategy. He joined JB Financial in 2019 after stints at Shinhan Bank and Hanwha Life, and is a veteran who has served as head of the group's digital transformation division and as deputy head of digital at both Gwangju Bank and Jeonbuk Bank. In his current role as head of AX and future growth, he leads the group's work across digital assets, AI transformation, strategic partner development and future growth businesses.

JB Financial has been investing in the digital asset ecosystem well ahead of its peers. The group is one of the major shareholders in Gopax, the exchange acquired by Binance, having taken equity stakes through affiliates JB Woori Capital and JB Asset Management. The move came as competition to secure exchange stakes has grown fierce across the financial and securities industries — with some players said to be willing to buy even a 0.1 percent stake — driven by regulators signaling a relaxation of the policy separating finance from virtual assets.

That early positioning has put JB Financial's portfolio back in the spotlight. Since 2023, the group has been broadening its fintech partnerships to build a collaboration base spanning digital asset exchanges, wallet services and overseas fintech. The push reflects an effort to find new growth engines beyond the structural constraints of regional banking — sluggish local economies and population outflows. The industry widely regards JB Financial as the most aggressive traditional financial institution in pursuing digital transformation.

Portfolio companies have been delivering results in quick succession. Park highlighted that AhnLab Blockchain Company (ABC), the blockchain subsidiary of cybersecurity firm AhnLab in which JB Financial invested in the third quarter of last year, recently obtained a virtual asset service provider (VASP) license from the Financial Intelligence Unit for virtual asset custody and transfer services. ABC operates Klip, a virtual asset wallet service it acquired from Ground X, the technology affiliate of Kakao.

Wavebridge, which holds both digital asset exchange and custody licenses, is another key investment. This year, Wavebridge became the first domestic firm to launch custody services on Canton, an institutional blockchain network involving global financial institutions, and is expanding its digital asset infrastructure business targeting corporate clients.

Park also pointed to the group's track record of turning investments into actual financial products as a competitive advantage. A co-lending product developed with Toss is the prime example. "JB Financial made a strategic investment in Toss when it was still in its early growth stage, and after roughly three years of collaboration, we were able to launch a co-lending product between Toss Bank and Gwangju Bank — the first financial innovation service of its kind in Korea," he said. He added that the group would build on that experience to deepen cooperation with Gopax, exploring opportunities in digital asset custody and wallet services as infrastructure development progresses.

These examples illustrate how JB Financial is broadening the foundation for its future growth businesses along two axes: strategic alliances and an investment portfolio. "A bank's capacity for innovation depends on how quickly it can read new markets and translate them into products," Park said. "We want to be the first to bring digital asset services applicable to the domestic market, drawing on overseas cases including those in the United States."

As alliances between traditional financial institutions and fintech companies accelerate, Park said the importance of an inorganic growth strategy will only increase. "JB Financial is absorbing innovative DNA from outside by collaborating with companies at the frontier of change — fintech, digital assets and foreign-resident financial services," he said. "The key is building partnerships that generate synergies while preserving the independence and expertise of our partners, rather than pursuing straightforward mergers and acquisitions."

The JB Forum, a networking event for fintech, platform and startup companies that JB Financial hosted in Jeongeup, North Jeolla Province, last year, reflects the same thinking. The group also aims to serve as a platform that creates new business opportunities unique to JB Financial by connecting companies with one another. "As good companies grow, collaboration opportunities naturally increase," Park said. "Our goal for the JB Forum, which we plan to hold again this October, is to build relationships where we help each other grow."

Another major theme in the digital finance market is the "AI agent economy." The premise is that, unlike the existing economy where humans make payments, a machine-to-machine economy — in which AI agents autonomously purchase data and execute transactions — is set to take hold. As the volume of transactions conducted without human intervention grows, analysts say stablecoins will emerge as core infrastructure for automated payment systems.

Asked about the role of banks in an AI agent economy, Park — who oversees the group's AI transformation strategy — said banks would evolve on the foundation of their existing payment functions. "Payments remain a core function of banking," he said. "Once the regulatory framework for stablecoins is in place, the day will come when banks offer wallet functionality for storing digital assets, and stablecoins will be part of that." Toward that end, Jeonbuk Bank is currently working toward an "all-in-one wallet" in which a fiat currency account and a digital asset wallet are visible within a single UI and UX.

The field JB Financial sees as the primary use case for a won-backed stablecoin is financial services for foreign residents. Park explained the group's rationale for joining a won stablecoin consortium: "JB Financial views local currency and foreign-resident finance as the core use cases, so we expect actual utilization to be high." As foreign workers play an increasingly important role at industrial sites across the Honam region, the group believes overseas remittance demand from that population will be substantial if stablecoins are introduced domestically.

"Demand for stablecoins will also be considerable given their ability to reduce currency volatility," Park said. He added that fast transfer speeds are among the biggest advantages of stablecoins, and that Jeonbuk Bank's "Bravo Korea" app — which serves foreign customers — could be leveraged as one potential channel for developing digital asset services going forward.

Bravo Korea serves not only as a financial platform for foreign residents but also as a testbed where JB Financial's portfolio companies collaborate. Companies providing services through the platform include overseas remittance platform Hanpass (15 percent stake), medical services firm Mediark (11.1 percent), residential services firm Encowithus (16.1 percent), Korean-language education platform Tuida (11.1 percent) and visa administrative support firm K-Visa (4.65 percent). "Growing the engine of growth through connections and collaboration among our investee companies is the blueprint JB Financial is working toward," Park said.