Visa has formed a strategic partnership with Dunamu, the parent company of South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, to explore stablecoin payments, cross-border remittances and artificial intelligence-powered commerce.

Under the agreement, the companies will combine Dunamu's digital asset technology with Visa's global payments network to explore payment, remittance and settlement services in major markets, according to a Friday announcement from Dunamu.

"The spread of AI, stablecoins and tokenization is a key trend that will change how finance and commerce operate," Dunamu CEO Oh Kyung-seok said, adding that the partnership aims to connect digital assets with traditional finance.

The deal comes amid a broader wave of stablecoin legislation and corporate adoption. In the United States, the GENIUS Act, signed into law in July, established a federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, while South Korea's National Assembly has been debating its own Digital Asset Basic Act, which includes provisions on won-based and foreign-currency stablecoin issuance. This regulatory momentum has pushed banks, exchanges and payment networks to position themselves for stablecoin-based services.

Dunamu and Visa are considering business models involving Open Standard's proposed Open USD (OUSD), a dollar-backed stablecoin unveiled in June. Open Standard said more than 140 companies had signed up to use OUSD, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Coinbase and BlackRock. However, Dunamu said OUSD is only one of several stablecoin projects under review and that it has not prioritized a specific stablecoin for the partnership.

In July, Upbit clarified that it was not participating in the issuance of OUSD after its operator, Dunamu, was named among the businesses involved in the initiative.

Beyond stablecoin payments, the two companies will also explore agentic commerce, in which AI agents can search for products and services and make purchases and payments on a user's behalf. They plan to examine ways to combine AI with stablecoin payment and settlement infrastructure. Agentic commerce has drawn growing attention across the payments industry, with major card networks and fintech firms working on protocols that would let autonomous AI agents transact within established payment rails, where stablecoins' programmability is seen as a potential fit for machine-to-machine settlement.

Visa, one of the world's largest card payment networks, has been expanding its involvement in digital assets, having previously enabled stablecoin settlement on its network. Upbit, operated by Dunamu, is one of South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, holding a dominant share of the local market.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to maintain a stable value by pegging their price to a reference asset, most commonly the US dollar. Major payment companies and financial institutions have increasingly adopted them for cross-border settlement and remittances, where they can offer faster settlement than traditional correspondent banking chains.

For now, the partnership is exploratory, with no specific stablecoin, launch date or commercial service announced. How any resulting services would fit pending Korean stablecoin regulation remains an open question observers will be watching.

Source: Cointelegraph