The media reported that Samsung is currently working with the Bank of Korea to create a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

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The tech giant has signed a cooperation agreement, also defined as a memorandum of understanding, with the central bank of South Korea. As part of this interaction, the company and the financial institution will be engaged in conducting technical research on the product.

Seunghong Lee, Senior Deputy Director of the Bank of Korea, said that the lender expects that through the implementation of the memorandum of understanding, the Republic of Korea will continue to hold leadership positions in the field of autonomous CBDC technology, an area that is currently being actively studied by central banks in many countries of the world.

The agreement provides for the creation of an autonomous digital currency that will be compatible with Samsung Galaxy phones and will allow contactless payments between Galaxy smartphones and smartwatches using near-field communication (NFC) technology. This feature will be available even if there is no Internet connection.

Won Jun Choi, Samsung’s executive vice president of mobile technology, said that cooperation with the lender allowed the company to apply innovative solutions that ensure security in the field of digital currencies. He also stated his expectations that these partnerships will make a significant contribution to the development of the global autonomous CBDC technology.

Samsung and the Bank of Korea already have experience in cooperation on projects related to digital currency. In August 2021, the technology giant and the financial institution announced joint work on the introduction of a new generation of currency on Galaxy smartphones in a pilot mode. Digital funds within the framework of this project were used for cross-border applications and functionality in autonomous environments. This program was aimed at verifying money transfers between countries, issuing and distributing CBDC, and monitoring how these processes are implemented in the virtual space.

In October last year, it became known about the appearance of Samsung Wallet in 11 new markets. Jeanie Khan, executive vice president and head of the Digital Life team in the Mobile eXperience division at Samsung Electronics, said at the time that the company was interested in expanding access to the digital wallet.

As we have reported earlier, Samsung launches Axis credit card in India.