The Financial Services Commission (FSC) will do all it can to set up the Common Blockchain Consortium in the financial industry by the end of this year, said FSC Chairman Yim Jong-yong on Oct. 24. The government move can be taken as a signal that it will take action to help the financial industry take advantage of Fintech to improve its financial products, recognizing that Blockchain is a key financial infrastructure in Korea. KB Card is set to introduce its Blockchain to replace various personal authentication systems to verify financial transactions and services from the middle of this month.
The FSC will also allow Bitcoin, a non-physical currency, to be used as an official currency in Korea as soon as possible.
The FSC will help the financial industry including banks, securities firms, and credit card firms form a consortium to jointly conduct research on Blockchain as a pilot project. The FSC will also help the financial industry legitimize the use of Bitcoin and other digital currencies in the system.
So far the development of Blockchain technology in the financial industry and its commercial use have been expanded, but the study on Bitcoin, whose use has been growing around the world, has been lagging in Korea.
At the Fintech Demonstration Day and Fintech Integration Forum, the FSC chairman said the base for the development of Fintech technology has been established in Korea over the past two years and Korea will reform the regulations and the systems to further develop Fintech technology.
Blockchain records all the financial transactions and shares them with individual financial firms as a database, eliminating danger of hacking as the financial transactions are jointly confirmed with no need for certification by a third party for the financial transactions. Furthermore, it is convenient for users and reduces expenses for financial firms, which is why competition among financial institutions on the development of the technology has been intensifying.
The FSC also has decided to double the funding for the development of Fintech technology to 3 trillion won in next three years. The money to be allocated for investment this year rose from 500 billion won to 1 trillion won.
The FSC also launched the Fintech Integrated Forum Service this year so information related to Fintech can be obtained. The forum contains information on Fintech collected from each financial firm around the country
A Fintech Open Platform was launched in Korea for the first time in the world on Aug. 30 in a bid to help Fintech firms develop innovative financial services. A Fintech Open Platform is a combination of a website where Fintech firms can download program commands used for development of Fintech services, and a physical space where they can run test operations of the programs they developed.
Open API Systems within a Fintech Open Platforms provide program commands needed when programming Fintech services with banking functions including money transfer and balance check in the form of standardized application programming interface (API).
Until now, Fintech service developers had to sign separate contracts with each commercial banks in order to embed banking services in their programs. For example, even if a Fintech firm signed a contact with Bank A and launched a money transfer application linked with the bank, it had to sign different contracts with other banks separately because the program isn’t compatible with other banks. However, with the introduction of open API system, in order for a Fintech firm to develop a Fintech service with banking functions it simply has to download program commands which 16 commercial banks and 25 securities companies provide in a single unified format.
_임종룡.jpg)
