South Korea’s Woori Bank To Offer Crypto Custody Services

Woori Financial Group becomes the third major banking institution to enter the digital asset custody service (DACS) market. On July 11, Woori joins the first two South Korean banks namely KB Financial Group and Shinhan Financial Group to enter the crypto custody services.

Woori Bank is joining hands with Coinplug, a Bitcoin-based fintech solution company to establish a DACS joint venture, named D-Custody.

D-Custody’s largest shareholder will be Coinplug, followed by Woori Bank. It should be noted, the joint venture will be incorporated in the coming weeks.

On another note, the existing legislation in South Korea does not allow local entities to access any cryptocurrency exchanges. Hence, its banks can only enter the crypto space through the help of joint ventures of share investments.

Consequently, as local banks are not allowed to directly enter the DACS, the number of financial institutions setting up joint ventures is increasing. Woori Bank representative shared,

In overseas markets, the digital asset custody has become a successful, established practice among the new services offered by the banks.

Kookmin, the country’s largest financial institution had filed for a trademark application regarding its custody service last March 2020.

In June 2020, Nonghyup Bank also launched its blockchain financial services consortium in partnership with Hexlant, a blockchain developer. More so, they announced plans to launch a custody business alongside Korea Information & Communications Co.

The latest, from January 2021, was Shinhan Bank. According to their announcement, they made a strategic investment in the crypto custody consortium, Korea Digital Asset Trust. Notably, Korea Digital Asset Trust is backed by the country’s major local exchange, Korbit.

Source: https://coinquora.com/south-koreas-woori-bank-to-offer-crypto-custody-services/