South Korea’s payments experience looks ‘cutting-edge’ on the surface—tap-to-pay works almost everywhere, from subways to neighborhood shops, and mobile wallets are deeply embedded in daily life. But beneath that seamless consumer layer sits an aging settlement architecture that is increasingly out of sync with where global payments are heading, raising concerns that Korea’s ‘domestic-optimized’ system is becoming a modern-day Galápagos: highly evolved locally, yet isolated from broader international standards.
The core of Korea’s payments rails remains anchored in a vertically integrated… Read more






