[Token Stocks] Kakao strengthened due to attention on AI payment infrastructure... The gap in Korean won stablecoins is a topic

With growing expectations for the expansion of the AI agent payment market, Kakao is showing strong momentum. Kakao is listed on the x402 Foundation’s ranking and is participating in the global AI payment ecosystem, but domestically in Korea, the lack of a won stablecoin system is seen as a stumbling block to business expansion.

According to Daily Economy, as the “AI agent shopping”—where AI directly completes payments from data queries—officially launches, Coinbase’s x402 protocol transactions are rapidly increasing. The daily transaction count for x402 is 89,730, with a transaction volume of $1,001,472, representing an 11.72% and 21.39% increase respectively compared to a month ago. The market, which had a weekly trading volume of about $200k at the beginning of the year, has expanded over 70 times since March, reaching a record high of $15.3 million in the third week of March.

This trend is also quite favorable for domestic platform companies like Kakao. The x402 Foundation includes global companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Visa, with Kakao Pay and Lambda256 also participating. Based on Kakao’s approximately 49 million users on Kakao Talk, there is widespread discussion about the potential for Kakao to expand AI agent payment services in the future.

However, progress in establishing the system remains slow. Due to delays in the handling of the Digital Asset Basic Act, guidelines related to the won stablecoin have not been issued, and there are disagreements among financial authorities and related departments. As a result, domestic companies are reportedly preparing related businesses on global blockchains before regulatory certainty is achieved.

Previously, the Bank of Korea and LG CNS jointly completed a proof of concept for an automatic deposit token payment system utilizing x402. McKinsey predicts that the AI agent commerce market will grow to a maximum of $5 trillion by 2030. Industry experts worry that the slower the institutionalization of payment methods, the more likely the domestic market will reorganize around US dollar stablecoins.

Source = Daily Economy