Shinhan Bank to open Bitcoin remittance channel from South Korea to China next month

Shinhan Bank, a major financial institution in South Korea, recently announced that it will launch a Bitcoin remittance service between South Korea and China in December this year. Shinhan Bank is the first major financial institution to announce the opening of a Bitcoin transfer system.

Shinhan Bank is headquartered in Seoul, with 723 branches, 8,531 employees, and total assets of 285 trillion won (about 251 billion U.S. dollars). The bank has 140 overseas branches in 19 countries around the world.

Shinhan Bank's Bitcoin remittance service is powered by the startup Streami, which is reportedly a "blockchain remittance and financial services architecture provider." Traditional remittance networks usually charge high fees and take a long time. Streami has noticed this and helps its customers conduct cross-border Bitcoin remittances, greatly saving the time required (within a few minutes) and fees.

Streami was founded last year and its CEO, Junhaeng Lee, formerly of McKinsey, said the company was originally focused on building a remittance corridor from South Korea to China, but has now started working with other companies to open more remittance corridors.

Streami emerged from the incubator program initiated by Shinhan Bank Lab. In 2015, Shinhan Bank acquired a portion of Streami's equity for 500 million won (about 430,000 US dollars). In December last year, Streami also received a $2 million seed round of financing led by Shinhan Bank.

Lee said:

At present, in addition to Shinhan Bank, we have also established cooperative relationships with other companies. We hope to shift our business focus to the domestic market as soon as possible, but given the domestic banking system deployment and compliance issues, it may take quite some time.

South Korea is arguably the easiest country in the world to buy Bitcoin. There are several major Bitcoin exchanges in South Korea, and people can also buy Bitcoin from 17,000多个ATM机and 24,000个商店in the country.

The South Korean government also seems to have taken notice of Bitcoin activity, as they recently announced plans to issue a blockchain-based digital currency in the next few years.

In order to legalize digital currency as a payment method, South Korea's monetary law must be adjusted accordingly. Therefore, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) recently announced that it will institutionalize digital currency before 2017.

Before digital currency transactions are fully legalized, Streami's transfer method can only remain the same: first transfer the cash to a Bitcoin exchange in Hong Kong, and then transfer the funds to a large exchange in mainland China and convert them into RMB to the recipient.

Lee said:

We do not rely on any one exchange and only use those that are regulated.

South Korea has become the center of the Bitcoin remittance market because it is very convenient for Koreans to buy Bitcoin, and there are many job seekers from the Philippines who usually send money back home. Payphil, Hyphen and Coinplug are all dedicated to Bitcoin remittance channels from the Philippines to South Korea. All three companies have their own business focus and are likely to become strong competitors for Shinhan Bank's remittance services.