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Bithumb, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange with an average daily trading volume of about $380 million, has partnered with BitPay to enter the global remittance market.
The partnership would enable businesses in that region to issue invoices in Bitcoin and get settled through BitPay, a Bitcoin payment processing service, in a faster, cheaper, and more secure manner.
The partnership was confirmed to CNBC by BitPay chief commercial officer Sonny Singh, who expects cross-border payments between Korea and the West would hit a record high of $200 billion this year.
Singh said
“Right now, people are doing cross-border payments […] and paying bank wires, FX fees around 4% and it takes about four days. Using Bithumb and BitPay, we’re able to make this a 1% fee in one business day.”
Singh, who revealed that BitPay is on track to process $4 billion worth payments in 2018, is not worried about potential regulations in South Korea. Singh said
“We welcome regulation. So, I think all the Korean exchanges like Bithumb — they welcome regulations too. We make sure they do proper AML/KYC checks.”
The partnership may also face tough competition from South Korea’s Woori Bank, which announced its intention to start facilitating cross-border payments using Ripple (XRP) this year.
South Korea has introduced a string of regulations for cryptocurrency trading and related business in the recent months. The country has banned anonymous trading accounts, domestic ICOs, use of cryptocurrency exchanges abroad. Additionally, government officials are also banned from holding and trading in cryptocurrencies.
