MoonPay and Dunamu, the company behind South Korea’s Upbit exchange, said on 20 October that they will explore stablecoin payments, corporate treasury services and a wider overseas reach for Dunamu’s GIWA blockchain. The MoonPay Dunamu tie-up was announced in a MoonPay press release sent from New York at 19:00 ET (23:00 UTC), which calls it a “strategic collaboration”. It describes no memorandum of understanding or other signed document, gives no financial terms and sets no timetable.
That matters because almost everything the two companies want to build depends on things that do not exist yet in Korea: a GIWA mainnet, a law that lets someone issue a won-pegged stablecoin, and a finished merger between Dunamu and Naver Financial.
What MoonPay and Dunamu said they will look at
The release lists three areas. The first is stablecoin-based global payments and the movement of funds, with a review of cross-border payment and transfer use cases. The second is corporate finance and treasury management. The third is the growth of GIWA, which the companies want to connect to MoonPay’s global services and partner network so that products built on Dunamu’s chain can reach markets outside Korea.
The two firms say they will look for business opportunities together and work out the technical and commercial potential from here.
Only one person is quoted. Bugeon Lee, MoonPay’s head of APAC, says in the release that for stablecoins to work as global financial infrastructure, “it is important to have the technology and network” that support the day-to-day finance of real businesses, beyond cross-border transfers. No one from Dunamu is quoted in the release, and The Block’s report quotes no Dunamu executive either.
MoonPay, founded in 2019, says in its company description that it serves more than 35 million customers in 180 countries and over 1,500 enterprise clients.
No MOU, no stablecoin, no date: what the release leaves out
The release does not mention a memorandum of understanding or any signed agreement, and it sets out no terms. The Block’s Danny Park also describes the arrangement only as a strategic collaboration under which the companies will explore opportunities, and makes no mention of a signing.
Several basic questions have no public answer as of 21 October. The release does not name the stablecoin that would carry the payments, whether a dollar token, a won token or something else. It names no payment corridor and no country. It does not say who pays whom, whether either side takes a stake, or when a first product could launch. We found no separate statement or filing from Dunamu on the collaboration.
Coindaro has covered several stablecoin payment announcements of this kind in the past week, including Coinbase’s link-up with payout network Thunes and the Mesh and Visa plan for spending from crypto wallets. Neither of those named a launch date either.
GIWA, the Upbit chain, is still a testnet
GIWA is an Ethereum layer 2 network that Upbit is building with Optimism on the OP Stack. Upbit runs it under the self-managed tier of Optimism’s OP Enterprise programme, operating its own infrastructure while Optimism provides technical support and failover. GIWA runs one-second blocks and uses ETH as its fee token, with no separate native token advertised.
It has no mainnet. On 27 September, GIWA said on X that a reported leak of a mainnet RPC address could not be real because the mainnet had not launched, crypto.news reported. Its network guide describes the mainnet as “currently under development” and lists only the GIWA Sepolia test network. The project website marks GIWA Wallet and the planned stablecoin ecosystem as coming soon. No launch date has been published.
So the third leg of the MoonPay plan, giving GIWA-based products more overseas access, refers to a chain on which no real-money product can run today. Linking a payments company’s network to it is a project for after mainnet.
Dunamu is in the middle of a merger that slipped to 2027
Dunamu agreed in November 2025 to become a wholly owned subsidiary of Naver Financial, the fintech arm of Naver, through a share swap. The Block reported at the time an exchange ratio of 2.5422618 Naver Financial shares per Dunamu share and a deal value of about 15.13 trillion won. The swap was first set for 30 June 2026.
It has now been pushed back three times. In a filing on 7 October, Dunamu moved the swap to 31 March 2027, Seoul Economic Daily reported, citing reviews by the authorities and related procedures that are still under way. The deal needs a merger review by the Korea Fair Trade Commission and approvals from financial regulators. A Dunamu official said the two companies are cooperating with those reviews.
| Step | Previous date | New date (7 October filing) |
|---|---|---|
| Share swap | 31 December 2026 (after 30 June and 30 September) | 31 March 2027 |
| Extraordinary shareholders’ meeting | 19 November 2026 | 26 February 2027 |
| Shareholder record date | 22 October 2026 | 18 January 2027 |
| Capital reduction record date | 30 December 2026 | 30 March 2027 |
A Dunamu official told the paper that “the basic structure, purpose and direction of the transaction have not changed”. For MoonPay, that means its Korean counterpart will not reach its final corporate shape before spring 2027 at the earliest.
Dunamu has other stablecoin partners too. On 15 May 2026, Hana Bank agreed to buy 6.55% of Dunamu (2,284,000 shares) from Kakao Investment for about 1.0033 trillion won, becoming its fourth-largest shareholder, Asia Business Daily reported. The two signed a strategic MOU the same day that covers building a Korean won stablecoin ecosystem and blockchain-based foreign currency remittance. That one is a named MOU; the MoonPay announcement is not described as one.
Korea’s won stablecoin law has not reached a vote
A won-pegged stablecoin needs a legal basis that Korea does not have yet. On 8 April 2026, the ruling Democratic Party proposed a Digital Asset Basic Act under which issuers of fiat-linked tokens would need approval, minimum capital, reserves and a duty to redeem, CoinDesk reported. The talks had stalled over who may issue: the Bank of Korea wants only companies at least 51% owned by banks to do so, while the Financial Services Commission (FSC) has warned that such a rule would hold back innovation.
On 8 October, FSC chairman Lee Eok-won told the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee that consultations between government agencies on the law were in their final stages, Herald Business reported. He gave no date for a bill and, asked what kind of won stablecoin was under consideration, said that would be decided as policy in light of market conditions. He used similar words a year earlier: at the October 2025 audit he said the bill was in final coordination and would reach the Assembly before the end of 2025, Byline Network reported. As of 21 October 2026, we found no report that the government bill had been submitted.
Until that law passes, the stablecoin a Korean exchange group could legally issue or use at home is undefined, and so is the role a bank shareholder such as Hana would play. Readers new to the topic can start with our guide to how stablecoins work. Korean exchanges also face other policy decisions this autumn, among them a possible fourth delay of the 22% crypto tax.
Dates to watch for the MoonPay and Dunamu plan
The first is any detail from the companies themselves: a named stablecoin, a corridor, a signed document or a statement from Dunamu. None has appeared so far.
The second is a GIWA mainnet date, which GIWA has not given. After that come the Korean steps: the government’s Digital Asset Basic Act reaching the Assembly, the Fair Trade Commission’s decision on the Naver deal, and Dunamu’s rescheduled shareholders’ meeting on 26 February 2027, five weeks before the share swap now set for 31 March.