Hyundai Card Cracks Seven-Minute Stablecoin Transfer

Hyundai Card has successfully completed the first production-ready stablecoin intercompany transfer by a major Korean conglomerate, using Tether's USDT on the Avalanche network. The payments unit of South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group announced that it had cleared the hurdle, convincing auditors and internal-controls teams to accept the transaction.

The pilot converted $20,000 held by Hyundai Motor America into USDT, routed the funds across Avalanche's C-Chain to Hyundai Motor Mexico, and reconverted them back into U.S. dollars in a seven-minute round-trip. This is significantly faster than the equivalent correspondent-bank wire, which takes three to four hours.

The announcement comes as South Korea's regulatory architecture for digital assets is in transition. The National Assembly passed amendments to the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act in May 2026 that bring cross-border crypto transfers under formal foreign-exchange oversight for the first time; those amendments take effect in late 2026.

A broader Digital Asset Basic Act remains pending, stalled over a dispute between the Bank of Korea and the Financial Services Commission. Hyundai's announcement effectively forces this conversation, as it has built production-ready infrastructure on dollar-pegged private stablecoins that Korean regulators have not yet formally recognized.