Hyundai becomes first major South Korean company to introduce internal stablecoin transfers

Summary

• Hyundai became the first major South Korean company to use the Avalanche for live cross-border treasury transfers.
• In its first phase, Hyundai transferred $20,000 from its U.S. unit to its Mexico unit using USDT, cutting transfer times to about seven minutes from the usual three to four hours via traditional banking.
• The carmaker plans to expand the project to more payment corridors and currencies, including a pilot in Europe that will test local currency transfers and foreign-exchange costs with Circle and Visa.

Hyundai, the worlds third-largest carmaker by vehicle sales, moved a stablecoin-based, cross-border, internal remittance system into production readiness on the Avalanche blockchain, becoming the first major South Korean company to do so.

“Hyundai is the first major enterprise to publicly announce this type of implementation on Avalanche, but the initiative represents more than a technical experiment,” said Justin Kim, head of APAC at Ava Labs, which develops and supports the blockchain platform. This is already a real treasury management use case, not a sandbox — the pilot moved live USD and USDT between Hyundai Motor's U.S. and Mexico entities,

The international transfer comes as stablecoins gain traction beyond crypto trading. Large companies are increasingly testing the technology to move money between subsidiaries, settle cross-border payments and reduce the cost and time associated with traditional banking rails, Lindsey Einhaus, who leads strategy and operations at stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge, said at Consensus Miami in May.

For the maker of the Kia compact and Ioniq electric cars the first phase involved transferring $20,000 from Hyundai Motor America to Hyundai Motor Mexico by converting dollars into Tether's USDT stablecoin before converting the funds back into dollars.