Korean Firms Deny Formally Joining Open USD Alliance

Several Korean companies listed as Open USD partners denied formally joining the stablecoin alliance after Open Standard named major local firms among more than 140 businesses tied to the project.

Samsung Electronics said there had been “no official consultations” and that it did not know what role it would play in the consortium, in a Chosun Biz follow-up on the Open USD launch. The company had appeared in earlier Korean coverage as one of the Korean names attached to Open Standard’s OUSD network.

Dunamu, K Bank and Shinhan Financial Group also said Open Standard had asked whether they were interested in participating and that they had only responded that they would review the matter. Their names later appeared among consortium members.

One company representative said the firm only learned it had been listed after Korean media coverage. The denials came after Open Standard’s launch materials and partner page circulated with Samsung Electronics, Shinhan Financial Group, Dunamu and other Korean firms attached to the OUSD rollout.

Open Standard Site Still Lists Korean Names

Open USD partner page still lists Samsung Electronics, Samsung Card, Shinhan Financial Group and other Korean-linked names among the companies shown under the project’s partner section.

The dispute is about formal participation, not whether Open Standard contacted the firms. The companies cited in the Korean follow-up said the contact had not reached the level of an official agreement to join the alliance.

That distinction affects how the OUSD partner network is presented. A company name on a public partner page can suggest launch participation, while a non-binding expression of interest or review request is a weaker status.

Open Standard unveiled Open USD with more than 140 listed partners across payments, banking, fintech, crypto, commerce and technology. The Korean denials now narrow part of that launch framing around whether some listed names had formally joined.

OUSD Launch Faces Partner-List Scrutiny

The Open USD launch arrived during heavy stablecoin competition after U.S. stablecoin legislation and new bank-led access routes brought payment tokens deeper into regulated finance.

Circle recently expanded USDC liquidity on Solana, while Standard Chartered launched institutional USDC minting and redemption for eligible clients through a bank-led structure. Visa also added more chains to its stablecoin settlement layer as payment networks expanded tokenized settlement infrastructure.

OUSD’s partner list remains central to the project’s launch claims because the network was introduced as a broad business-backed stablecoin effort. The Korean responses create a narrower verified status for some names: contact and interest review, but no formal agreement confirmed by Samsung Electronics, Dunamu, K Bank or Shinhan.