NH NongHyup partners Yellow Mobile's sister firm
Joo Jae-sung, left, head of NH NongHyup Bank's digital finance division, poses with The Loop CEO Kim Jong-hyup after the bank signed a non-binding contract with the sister company of Yellow Mobile at NH's fintech innovation center in downtown Seoul, Wednesday. / Yonhap
By Kim Yoo-chul
NH NongHyup Bank, the country's agriculture cooperative-based banking group, said Thursday that it has teamed up with a sister company of Korea's Yellow Mobile to develop banking systems that would run within blockchain networks.
“NH made an agreement with The Loop to jointly develop business projects that will be operational within blockchain technology,” NH said in a statement.
The timing of the partnership is interesting because Korea is considering allowing initial coin offerings (ICOs) for local companies on the local bourse with “certain conditions.”
The Loop is a developer of a Korea-based digital token ICON, which is being traded in Hong Kong. Yellow Mobile, which has been one of the most active Korean startups in fundraising last year, is aiming to expand its business portfolio beyond shopping, media, ad tech, travel and offline-to-online by providing resources to The Loop
NH NongHyup declined to reveal further details of the partnership citing the sensitivity of the issue. “The one thing we can say for the time being is that we will acquire tech in the fintech industry, if necessary,” said an official at the bank.
The Korean bank is aiming to collaborate with other enterprises which are working with blockchain technologies.
In a related note, NH has recently become a part of blockchain firm R3's distributed ledger consortium.
The consortium, which contains over 150 international members, included lots of leading banks such as Bangkok Bank, Barclays, BBVA, BNP Paribas, Wells Fargo, the Royal Bank of Scotland, ING and CTBC Bank.
This is not the only blockchain consortium NH Bank has joined _ it is part of Korea's blockchain consortium which aims to build blockchain-based tools to manage trade and financial processes. Other members of the consortium include Daishin Securities, Dongbu Securities along with some blockchain-based startups.