Financial Services Commission Chair Lee Eok-won Pushes QR Payment Links in India, Vietnam

From left, Financial Services Commission Chair Lee Eok-won and Vietnam central bank Gov. Pham Duc An. [Photo=Financial Services Commission] — (From left) Financial Services Commission Chair Lee Eok-won and Vietnam central bank Gov. Pham Duc An. [Photo=Financial Services Commission]

Lee Eok-won, chair of South Korea’s Financial Services Commission, carried out financial diplomacy in India and Vietnam from the 19th to the 25th, joining President Lee Jae-myung’s trip and promoting projects including linking QR-code payment networks, the commission said on the 26th. It was the first visit to India by an FSC chair, the commission said, as the two sides sought to upgrade financial cooperation.

The FSC said Lee agreed with counterparts in both countries to pursue QR-code payment interoperability, which would allow people to pay in the other country using their domestic apps without exchanging currency. The service is expected to apply lower fees than overseas credit card payments, with an estimated savings of about 2 percentage points per transaction.

Indonesia launched a QR-code payment linkage service on the 1st, and similar arrangements are under discussion with Singapore and Thailand, the FSC said.

During the trip, Lee also agreed to broaden cooperation on financial hub development, capital market infrastructure and financing support for small and midsize businesses. The FSC and the Financial Supervisory Service signed a memorandum of understanding with India’s International Financial Services Centres Authority, or IFSCA, to support financial hub development and to build a cooperation framework between Seoul and Busan and India’s GIFT City.

Through a Korea-India financial cooperation forum, the two sides detailed tasks including modernizing cross-border payment infrastructure, building capital market infrastructure and fostering financial hubs. The FSC said they also discussed expanding investment using India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund, or NIIF, and ways to cooperate with startups.

In Vietnam, the FSC highlighted licensing progress for Korean financial firms and expanded infrastructure cooperation. IBK Industrial Bank of Korea obtained final approval to establish a local subsidiary in Vietnam for the first time in about nine years. In January, Korea Development Bank’s Hanoi branch received approval for the first time in seven years. The FSC said South Korea has emerged as the country with the most local subsidiaries in Vietnam and the second-largest number of foreign bank branches there.

The Korea Asset Management Corp. and the Vietnam Asset Management Co. also specified the scope of cooperation under a 2019 MOU related to a platform for resolving nonperforming loans. The Korean agency is working on a project to share Korea’s system for handling bad loans with Vietnam, the FSC said.

* This article has been translated by AI.

Lee Seongjin