Shinhan Card Receives Patent For Blockchain Credit System

By Rishma Banerjee

One of South Korea’s biggest credit card companies, Shinhan Card, has acquired the patent for a blockchain payment processing system. It is set to revolutionize digital payments in the country.

The patent filing on the website of the Korea Intellectual Property Rights Information Service (Kipris) provides an overall idea of the invention as follows (via informal translation):

“A blockchain generating unit for generating a blockchain including a virtual currency generated according to a credit limit of a consumer and updating the blockchain according to payment details, and a transaction generating unit for storing transaction conditions corresponding to each of the plurality of accounts and for making settlement using the blockchain according to the transaction conditions.”

The announcement stated that the new patent will give Shinhan Card the opportunity to provide a “world-first” service via blockchain on things like spending limits, monthly instalments and making transactions on the regular.

The Korea Times quoted an “official” from the company as saying:
“Services using those key functions of credit cards will be extended to the blockchain-based system, a notable advancement from the status quo whereby most of the blockchain-based services available are limited to cash wiring or user identification for online transactions.”

The company is now looking forward to receiving patents from other countries such as the United States, China, Japan, Vietnam and etc, as it plans to target the global markets rather than the limited population of South Korea.

Once all their targets are achieved, Shinhan Card will have the potential to introduce a Phase-out withing three intermediaries. The parties involved would be value-added network service providers, credit card firms and the payment gates themselves. Although, it is not clear if all other jurisdictions will be in favour of this framework.

Understandably, there were no mentions of cryptocurrencies in the entire matter because it is clear that Shinhan Card will rely mostly on digital currencies rather than cryptos in their new project.