The South Korean city of Seongnam is reportedly planning to expand its blockchain or distributed ledger tech (DLT)-enabled payment platform by introducing digital gift certificates.
The city’s DLT based payments platform will be accessible via a mobile app, called Chak. The app has been developed by the Korea Minting and Security Printing Corp. (KOMSCO).
The blockchain-powered payments app should make it easier for the city’s residents to conduct contactless payments, which have become essential due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Three digital gift certificate types, which may represent cash, check cards, or mobile cards, may now be used at 45,000 card merchant locations across the South Korean city.
Seongnam is a satellite city of Seoul and notably the second-largest city in South Korea’s Gyeonggi Province after Suwon. It’s the country’s 10th largest city and has a population of around 1 million.
Seongnam is well-known in the country and globally for its Pangyo Tech Valley which is an IT complex that’s home to the nation’s leading technology companies, including Kakao Group, SK Telecom, AhnLabs, Nexon, among many others.
KEB Hana Bank, one of South Korea’s largest commercial banks, recently revealed that it would be working with the state-supported highway operator, the Korea Expressway Corporation, to support DLT-powered toll payments.
CenterPrime, a private Hyperledger based blockchain platform with access to the South Korean Open Banking API, is now sharing foreign exchange (FX) rate data from large Korean banks to Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network.
Last month, South Korean blockchain project ICONLOOP acquired $5 million in additional investments, after receiving capital from the $100 million K-Growth Fintech Innovation Fund.
In June 2020, AhnLab, a leading South Korean software security firm and several others joined MyIDAlliance, an organization establishing a blockchain based digital ID ecosystem.
In May 2020, South Korea’s Suseong University established a DLT and artificial intelligence (AI) training center.
